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Today we launched preorders for three new releases on Sorry State, and coincidentally test pressings for three upcoming releases just arrived yesterday. I’ll have plenty to tell you about those records in the coming months, but listening to the test presses last night had me reflecting on the process of releasing a record. Earlier this week I put a lot of energy into writing descriptions for the new releases, which is a weird exercise. I love writing for the newsletter, but I always struggle to write the generic blurbs that get passed along to distributors and reposted on the websites of stores and distros that carry the record. I feel like I know my audience for the newsletter. I imagine the people who read the newsletter are the die-hards like me who are eager to know about all the coolest new releases, and my job of telling you about what we carry is pretty straightforward. However, when I’m writing for the wider, more nebulous audience for the descriptions, it’s very different. The cliche is that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, and I feel that when I try to both introduce and sum up a record I care about in one pithy paragraph.

For many of the releases on the Sorry State label, the official description blurb is one of the few things I write about the record. Which is ironic because these are the releases I feel the most connected to. While I lean on the bands for most of the creative work on the records I release, I develop a close relationship with releases as I shepherd them through the production and manufacturing process. This relationship feels even more intimate when I put out multiple releases by an artist. So, for my staff pick this week, I thought I’d give you an insider’s view of the three new releases.

The Sorry State label has never benefited from consistent branding. I’ve always released whatever excited me at the moment, and you can see trends in the label’s discography as I get into particular sounds or scenes. There are also certain styles I just like; Sorry State will always put out records that sound like early 80s hardcore. While the three new releases differ greatly from one another, each of them continues a thread that runs through the label’s discography.

Invalid’s self-titled LP is SSR-108, and given that it has the earliest catalog number, I’m pretty sure it was the first of the three projects to come together. (I typically only assign a catalog number once I have a master recording for a release; if you want to read more insane ramblings about catalog numbers, check out this old staff pick.) As I wrote in the main release blurb, Invalid appeared on my radar when they released their Do Not Resuscitate cassette on Cruel Noise Records. I didn’t know it at the time (though I might have assumed), but Invalid features members of heaps of other bands I like. If you cruise their Discogs profile, you can see connections to Blood Pressure, Caustic Christ, and EEL, for instance, but there are many more I’m sure.

It’s more than the pedigree that attracted me to Invalid, though. Stylistically, Invalid has this sound that I don’t hear often, but I love when I do. The three records I mentioned in the official description—Direct Control’s first 7”, COC’s Eye for an Eye, and Unseen Force’s In Search of the Truth—all fall under that umbrella. It’s 80s hardcore at its core, but with a bit of thrash metal in the riffing style and an emphasis on writing memorable parts that aren’t quite pop but are hooky as hell. So you get the intensity of 80s hardcore, the musicality of thrash metal, and the catchiness of more anthemic strains of punk brought together in one package. It’s a subtle balance to achieve, but Invalid nails it.

Beyond the style, I also love that Invalid performs their music with such intensity. Conventional wisdom states that hardcore is a young person’s game, but I tend to be fond of bands whose members are older. These bands know—if only intuitively—why they’ve stuck with hardcore. I love the sound of young kids discovering hardcore as an outlet for their youthful energy, but there’s something about old heads who use hardcore as a way of articulating and responding to life’s never-ending drudgery. It makes the music mean more to me, like hardcore is growing along with me as I get older and my values and passions evolve.

Next up is SSR-110, Woodstock 99’s Super Gremlin LP. While Woodstock 99 released a demo and a 7” before Super Gremlin, I’ve known the members for much longer than the band has existed. Their singer and drummer are both from North Carolina and I’ve known them and followed their projects since they were quite young. In that way, Woodstock 99 connects to another thread in Sorry State’s discography, and that’s documenting the hardcore punk from our part of the world. This part of the label’s mission, which is inspired by Dischord Records, waxes and wanes as our local scene does, but I’m always proud to put out music from North Carolina that I think deserves a wider audience. Not that Woodstock 99 is from North Carolina, but my connection to the band is personal, unlike with Invalid and Hüstler where I have had little real-life hang time with the band members.

Anyway, Woodstock 99’s three core members were in Cement Shoes, and I followed and enjoyed that band and the first two Woodstock 99 releases. I liked all of them, but I hadn’t considered putting out a Woodstock 99 record. Then my friend Trevor, who sings for the band, sent me the recordings that became Super Gremlin. I’m not sure if he was fishing for a label or just sharing what he made because we’re friends, but the record blew me away. It starts off in the (relatively) straightforward hardcore mold of their previous 7”, but bigger, bolder, and meaner, the crisp and bright recording and the band’s massive sound reminding me of War All the Time / Kings of Punk-era Poison Idea. But then the record goes somewhere else.

If you lived in the mid-Atlantic and saw Cement Shoes numerous times over the course of their existence, you probably noticed a change in the band. They’d always had an off the wall sensibility (just look at the cover art for their first album), but toward the end of the band, that evolved into full-on antagonistic crowd baiting. I remember a show where they opened for Warthog and L.O.T.I.O.N. in Richmond. Trevor harassed and abused the audience for the length of their set, to where I was kind of upset and worried about him. Now that I think of it, that was the record release show for their album, Too, and I remember one member telling me they sold zero copies of their record at the gig. It’s like they were daring the crowd to like them, and no one took them up on it.

I think the darkness of that era of Cement Shoes resulted from some particular circumstances, because once the members moved to Cleveland and reconfigured as Woodstock 99, the seedy darkness had reemerged as a more playful, yet still dangerous, psychedelia. One thing I like about psychedelics is their ability to unlock my sense of wonder, and even though I was sober and taking a walk on the nature trail by my house when I first listened to Super Gremlin, it summoned that sense of wonder. As I listened to each track, I couldn’t wait to hear what the band was going to do next. Super Gremlin isn’t like a genre record where you know what you’re going to get and the band impresses you with their adeptness at elaborating and interpreting a style. It’s a record that sees punk rock as a wide-open arena of possibility, and charges in whatever direction the wind blows. It’s a record that feels so fresh that I wanted to be part of it, even if I know some people will not get it at all.

Finally, SSR-113 is Hüstler’s self-titled LP, which compiles their two previous cassette releases on Sorry State. Hüstler is one of the few bands who I agreed to put out based on an unsolicited submission. People send me music all the time. Every day I get one or two emails, sometimes more, from people asking Sorry State to release their music. A large percentage of these I never listen to because I can tell that the person doesn’t know or care about what Sorry State does. Plenty of others I listen to and like just fine, but don’t feel the spark I need to in order to want to release a record. Putting out a record is a big decision that involves investing thousands of dollars and many hours of my and my employees’ time, and it’s not worth doing if I’m not passionate about the music. With these kinds of submissions, I suggest other places where they might send their music and offer to carry the record in our distro once it’s out.

Submissions rarely move me enough to want to release a record when I have no personal connection to the band, but when Tyler from Hüstler sent me what became their first tape, I was hooked. I couldn’t (and, truthfully, still can’t) articulate what I heard that drew me in so much, but Hüstler just had something. Their music had the intensity of the hardcore and punk I’ve always loved, but it sounded fresh. It didn’t sound like anything I’d ever heard, but I knew that I liked it. That Tyler just wanted to put out a cassette and wasn’t pushing for a vinyl release (which is much more expensive and riskier) made it an easy decision to press up 100 cassettes and see if the rest of the world responded like I did.

And they did! Hüstler’s first tape sold out quickly, and once the physical copies were gone, the digital version kept getting downloads on Bandcamp and plays on Spotify. A few months later, Hüstler did a second recording that was even better than the first one. Without losing the intensity, they leaned into the more idiosyncratic elements of their sound and arrived at something even more original and memorable. The second tape sold out even quicker than the first, and also continued to get plays on Spotify and Bandcamp. I haven’t checked, but I’m guessing Hüstler has done more business in digital sales than any previous Sorry State artist. I think we hatched a plan for an LP compiling both tapes around the time the second EP came out. Given the strong reaction the first tape got and the fact that the second tape was (in my opinion) even better made me confident that plenty of other people like Hüstler just as much as I do.

Re-reading this lengthy staff pick, I realize I pretty much said what I said in the official release blurbs I mentioned at the beginning, only with a lot more words. Maybe this version clicked with you when the snappier versions didn’t, or maybe you should ignore my ramblings and just listen to the music and form your own impressions, because you can do that in the year 2022.

Peter Hammill: Nadir’s Big Chance 12” (1975, Charisma Records)

My favorite source of musical discoveries lately is the BBC 6 Music program The Freak Zone with Stuart Maconie, which plays left-field music of many stripes, including psych, prog, kosmiche, jazz, modern classical, electronic, and many more that are unclassifiable. I mentioned the show a few weeks ago because it turned me onto the Okay Temiz and Johnny Dyani LP that was my staff pick then, and another recent episode had me heading to Discogs to find a copy of this 1975 LP by Peter Hammill. I can’t remember what track Maconie played on his show, but it was enough to get me interested, and when I did a little digging and found that Nadir’s Big Chance was pretty much entirely in that 70s glam / art rock vein I love so much, I knew I had to find a vinyl copy for the full experience.

I didn’t know it until I started doing research in preparation to write this piece, but I already had several Peter Hammill records in my collection. However, they were not under Hammill’s own name but Van Der Graaf Generator, the group he co-founded. I’m not super knowledgeable about Van Der Graaf Generator, but I pick up their records whenever I come across them, and I always enjoy them. Hammill was prolific in the 70s, releasing a spate of LPs under his own name and Van Der Graaf Generator, sometimes multiple albums in a year. The solo and Van Der Graaf projects seem fluid as well, with the same musicians and songwriters contributing to both projects. In fact, Nadir’s Big Chance features all the musicians in Van Der Graaf’s 1975 lineup, and songwriting contributions from Judge Smith, who played drums in the original lineup of Van Der Graaf Generator.

While I’m not well-versed enough in this universe of musicians to explain precisely how it fits into the bigger picture of their discographies, I can tell you that Nadir’s Big Chance differs from Hammill’s other records in that, on these tracks, Hammill inhabits the character of Rikki Nadir. On the back of the jacket, Hammill calls Nadir a “loud, aggressive, perpetual sixteen-year-old,” and Nadir’s voice gives these “three chord wonders” an extra jolt of energy. While, in 1975, the glam rock movement was losing steam in Britain, Nadir’s Big Chance huffs from the same bag as records like Electric Warrior and Ziggy Stardust, all pomp and drama and exuberance. Nadir’s Big Chance doesn’t sound like kids’ music, though; what it resembles more than those mainstream glam touchstones are the artists from the artier end of the glam spectrum, particularly early Roxy Music and Brian Eno’s first couple of solo albums. Like those records, Nadir’s Big Chance struts and preens, but it also reaches and challenges, and the record is produced with a raw, homespun feel I love.

Famously, when John Lydon played some records on Capitol Radio in 1977, he dropped in two tracks from Nadir’s Big Chance, “Institute of Mental Health, Burning” (what a title!) and “Nobody’s Business,” noting that Bowie might have stolen a few moves from Hammill (though by 1975, one must note, Bowie had killed off Ziggy and was moving into his Thin White Duke phase). If I’ve piqued your interest, Lydon’s selections are a great starting point, but I’ll also mention “Birthday Special,” another of the highest energy tracks on the album.

The Apostles: Blow It Up Burn It Down Kick It Till It Breaks 7” (self-released, 1983)

Like my staff pick from last week, this 7” by the Apostles is another one I removed from my want list recently. Patience has always been the name of my game with record collecting. When someone recommends something to me or I hear about it, rather than rushing out to grab the first copy I can come across, I add it to the want list and wait for favorable terms to present themselves, whether that’s a copy from a US seller, an off condition copy for a bargain price, or the all-too-rare screaming deal. Occasionally, I break these rules and splurge (my impulse toward thrift is apt to dissolve when the item I want is in front of me, like at a shop or record fair), but my patience typically gets rewarded.

I added this 7” to my want list a few months ago when I was hanging out in the well-appointed artist lounge at Sorry eStates. (JK, I was just exchanging emails with a punk whose record we’re putting out from the drab, untidy confines of my windowless office.) Said punk mentioned this 1983 by the Apostles was one of their favorites so I checked it out on YouTube, liked what I heard, added it to the old want list. Eventually, the right deal came along and after a fraught journey from the UK to North Carolina, I finally had the EP in my hands.

I wasn’t a total stranger to the Apostles when I checked out Blow It Up Burn It Down Kick It Till It Breaks. If memory serves, sometime early in the history of Sorry State’s brick and mortar shop, someone (I can’t remember who… maybe La Vida Es Un Mus?) turned up dead stock copies of their 1986 LP for Mortarhate, Punk Obituary, and we carried them in the shop. I’m certain I listened to it, but I can’t remember how I felt about it and it didn’t move me enough to keep a copy for myself. I also knew the Apostles had a massive discography comprising numerous cassette albums, LPs, and singles. When a band has a huge discography, I’m apt to start at the beginning, but the many cassette albums and live tapes that preceded their first vinyl release made it difficult to figure out what one should consider the beginning.

As far as I can tell, Blow It Up Burn It Down Kick It Till It Breaks is the Apostles’ first vinyl release (though Discogs lists both it and Rising from the Ashes as having come out in 1983). The sound is eclectic even by anarcho-punk standards, landing somewhere between the more melodic sound of bands like Zounds and Crisis and the tougher, more hardcore anarcho sound of Conflict and Crass. For me, the standout track on this five-song EP is “Alien Asian,” which leans on an excellent melodic lead guitar line. The playing throughout is loose but powerful, with idiosyncratic touches like falsetto vocals and a lengthy drum solo at the end of “Pigs for the Slaughter.” I love how the Apostles can sound like a messy racket most of the time, but interesting and memorable bits frequently emerge from the din.

I also must note the EP’s awesome packaging. The foldout poster sleeve is pretty much de rigueur for anarcho punk, but the Apostles make good use of the format. The giant foldout is dense with text and imagery, much of it reproduced on such a tiny scale that it’s barely legible. You get the usual assortment of underground comics, lyrics, and political screeds along with some spicier content, like public callouts of other scene members and instructions for making petrol bombs and breaking into buildings (presumably for squatting). You get the impression the Apostles were bursting with ideas. I wonder if the other releases in their massive discography are similarly dense?

Blow It Up Burn It Down Kick It Till It Breaks takes me into the Apostles’ world so effectively that I’m eager to explore more of their discography. (As a devoted fan of the Fall, you might guess I have a weakness for bands with huge discographies and a proclivity for immersive world-building.) The small amount of research I’ve done on the group leads me to believe Blow It Up Burn It Down Kick It Till It Breaks might be one of the more straightforward releases in the Apostles’ discography, but if anyone has tips on what to explore next, I’m all ears.

Visitors: Electric Heat 7” (1979, Deep Cuts Records)

I don’t have much info for you about this single, which I struck from my want list last week. It had been there for many years courtesy of my friend Shane. Unfortunately for me, Shane moved back to his hometown of Portland a few years ago, but while he was in Raleigh, we would hang out every so often. We’d always play records for each other. He’d show up with a big stack of vinyl that I’d never heard before, and all of it would be on my want list by the end of the night. Such was the case with this 1979 EP from Visitors.

I haven’t been able to dig up much info about Visitors. I know they were from Edinburgh, Scotland, and the title track’s lyrics and the snowy photo of the band on the cover are right in line with what I imagine that city must be like in winter. I can’t find any info about any of the members’ other projects, though Visitors released a second single in 1980 and a third in 1981. I found a YouTube stream for the third single and it had a lush, 60s-influenced sound that reminded me of the Teardrop Explodes. Very different vibes than these three tracks. These the tracks have been compiled several times, so maybe one of those comps has liner notes that shed a little more light on Visitors?

As for Electric Heat, it’s a great single, certainly worthy of being comped several times. Standing on the verge of synth-punk, the title track’s lumbering post-punk combined with the primitive synth sound makes me think of Dub Housing-era Pere Ubu, but much starker, more primitive, and DIY. The second track, “Moth,” is cut from a similar cloth, while the b-side, “One Line,” is a waxing and waning number whose build-ups remind me of the Stranglers. Not a dud among the three, and when you throw in a snazzy pic sleeve, you have a very exciting single.

The Homosexuals: The Homosexuals’ Record LP (Recommended Records, 1984)

Like many people, I was introduced to the Homosexuals via the Astral Glamour 3CD collection that came out in 2004. That collection was the talk of the town when it came out, and deservedly so. Compiling everything the Homosexuals recorded, it was a fan’s dream. However, I wasn’t a Homosexuals fan (yet) when I heard it, and three jam-packed CDs is a lot for a new listener to process. My takeaway at the time was that the Homosexuals were a great band, “Hearts in Exile” was their best song, and the rest of their output was there for me to explore at a later date. I had their records sitting on my want list for ages, and a few weeks ago a copy of this album popped up for a nice price from a US seller.

I’m pretty sure all these songs appeared on Astral Glamour, but the more digestible package is hitting home with me. “Hearts in Exile” is still a standout—it’s like the best song Wire never wrote—but The Homosexuals Record presents a very different picture of who the Homosexuals were as a band than Astral Glamour. To me, there’s one side of the Homosexuals’ work that embraces the punk / UKDIY sensibility that I love… simple pop songs delivered with energy and passion. However, as with Wire, that extroverted side of the band contrasts with a more introverted, experimental streak. The Homosexuals Album was released on Recommended Records, the great, defiantly non-commercial experimental imprint that provided a home for some of the most out there sounds of the 80s. While “Neutron Lover” or “Hearts in Exile” might be an odd fit for Recommended Records, even comparatively poppy tracks like “Vociferous Slam” and “A Million Keys” have moments that wander into some pretty noisy stuff.

Speaking of noisy, one thing that surprised me about getting an original pressing of this record is how hot and abrasive the mastering job is. I don’t know if that was intentional, but the treble end of the spectrum is so hot that it can make your teeth hurt. Actually, after the LP was done, my wife asked that I not play it again when she was around… I’m sure she liked the songs, but the production is super abrasive. That’s something I never noticed on Astral Glamour.

The Homosexuals’ music is dense with ideas and pushes hard against the boundaries of the punk / post-punk sound, so I’ll need a lot more time with the album before I have anything original to say about it. However, it’s been great to spend time with a record that has that 70s punk / post-punk sound that I love so much, but still feels like a new discovery for me.

Okay Temiz / Johnny Dyani: Witchdoctor’s Son LP (orig. 1976, reissued 2019)

In last week’s newsletter I asked y’all for recommendations on slow death metal, and I want to thank everyone who sent me stuff to listen to! It’s been an insane week here at Sorry State and I haven’t had much time or attention to dig into those recommends, but I’m looking forward to it! Sometimes when people write to me to ask about an artist or title or recommend something to me, they seem shy or apologetic, assuming they don’t have anything to tell me about music. That’s bullshit! I am but a novice in the school of music history, and even if I’ve heard of something or even heard it, hearing a particular person recommend it (especially if they share their thoughts on it) can make me hear the music in a new way. So please, keep sharing with me!

My pick for this week is going to refer to another older pick, since my favorite BBC 6 Music show, Stuart Maconie’s The Freak Zone, introduced me to this one. I can’t remember which track from Witchdoctor’s Son they played, but it moved me enough to look up the record later, and when I listened to it I knew it was a must-buy. After a few weeks sitting on the Discogs want list, a reasonably priced copy of this 2019 reissue popped up in the US and I smashed that buy button. It arrived earlier this week and here we are!

Going in, I didn’t know anything about Okay Temiz or Johnny Dyani, but the reissue contains detailed liner notes that give a wealth of context for this album. Okay Temiz is a drummer from Turkey and Johnny Dyani is a bass player from South Africa. Both had migrated to the creatively fertile European jazz scene in the 60s. That scene drew players from all over the world, including expatriates from the American jazz scene attracted by Europe’s less intense racial attitudes and better paying gigs. Temiz and Dyani met playing with American avant-garde legend Don Cherry, and they played with him for years both as a trio and in larger ensembles. During this period, Cherry was consumed by the project of synthesizing a truly global music from folk music traditions from across the world, and Temiz and Dyani found this idea influential, leaning into their influences from their own countries’ folk traditions. After leaving Cherry’s band, Temiz and Dyani formed the trio Music for Xaba with Dyani’s bandmate from South African bebop group the Blue Notes, Mongezi Feza. Unfortunately, though, Feza passed away in December 1975, bringing the group to an end.

Witchdoctor’s Son was recorded during the duo’s 1976 residency in Istanbul, augmented by the musicians who joined them during their live gigs. Witchdoctor’s Son differs from Temiz and Dyani’s other recordings because it seems to have been created for and distributed within the Turkish market. Only 1000 copies of the original record were pressed, the cover art a photogram by the renowned Turkish visual artist Teoman Madra.

Anyone with a taste for Anatolian rock will love the first side of Witchdoctor’s Son, where Temiz composes one original tune and arranges four traditional Turkish songs. These songs are built around the distinctive Turkish scales and melodies I love, and the electric bassist for the session, Oğuz Durukan had even played with Erkin Koray. As much as I love the tunes, though, Temiz is the star of the session, laying down densely polyrhythmic heavy funk grooves that remind me of Jaki Liebezeit’s pioneering drumming for Can. Dyani takes the lead on side 2, arranging all the tracks. This side is cool, especially their version of Don Cherry’s “Elhamdulillah Marimba,” but it’s the a-side that I want to play over and over. Watch out if you listen to the album on YouTube, though, because Dyani’s side appears first on that rip for some reason.

I’m looking forward to checking out more of Temiz’s work in particular, and the liner notes on this reissue serve as a great road map. In the meantime, though, Witchdoctor’s Son is going to get a lot of play.

Over the past few years, I’ve accumulated three singles by the Cravats, which is only a small portion of the group’s discography. During their original run from 1978 until 1982, they released two full-length albums and ten singles, an impressive catalog for a band as uncommercial as the Cravats were most of the time. I know there are Cravats super-fans out there who know the band’s catalog well, and I won’t pretend to be one of those people. I know very little background information about the Cravats and I’m only familiar with this small and idiosyncratic sampling of their discography, but I enjoy these records.

I had some dim awareness that the Cravats were an outre / experimental punk band, but I think their 1979 7” The End on Small Wonder was the first time I’d sat down with one of their records. According to the price sticker, I picked this up for $7 from Vinyl Conflict in late 2016. Score! The a-side, “Burning Bridges,” is what sticks out on The End. Having expected something non-linear and avant-garde, it surprised me just how much of a tune “Burning Bridges” is. Built around an infectious horn line, it reminds me of horn-driven 90s (ska-?) punk like the Mighty Mighty Bosstones or even Reel Big Fish. That sunny horn line would have gotten me skanking if I’d heard it in 1995, the song’s brisk beat, propulsive bass, and triumphant chord progression sealing the deal. The b-side of The End is about three times as long as the a-side, so it’s mastered at about half the volume. That keeps “I Hate the Universe” from having the same impact as “Burning Bridges” even though it’s a similar song, an upbeat punk tune a bit like the Ruts, while the more ruminative closing track “The End” sounds like the weirder end of the Dangerhouse catalog (like Black Randy & the Metrosquad), which is more indicative of the other two Cravats records I own.

The next Cravats single I picked up was 1981’s Off the Beach. While the horns are still there, the music is now more jittery, and rather than gliding over top of the rhythm melodically, the horns skitter mosquito-like around the edges of the angular rhythms. The b-side track, “And the Sun Shone,” reminds me of their Small Wonder label-mates the Fall. Like many of the Fall’s best tracks from this period, the song is built around an ominous repetitive rhythm while horns, guitars, and electronic noises wander in and out of the mix like strangers in a busy train station. The back cover lists the sources of the sounds on the record in random order, including items like the band members’ names, musical instruments like drums, saxophone, and clarinet, and non-musical sound-making devices like a coffee percolator, vacuum cleaner, and drills.

The third single in my Cravats collection is Rub Me Out on Crass Records. The Cravats made their way to Crass Records after releasing five singles and an album on Small Wonder, releasing the Rub Me Out single in 1982 as well as their second album, The Colossal Tunes Out, on the Crass-related label Corpus Christi. Crass Records might seem like an odd fit for the Cravats if you’re only familiar with bigger Crass Records bands like Rudimentary Peni, Dirt, Flux of Pink Indians, and Crass themselves, but anyone who has delved deeper into the Crass Records catalog will have no trouble reconciling the Cravats’ uncommercial music with Crass’s intriguing but defiantly non-commercial aesthetic.

I’m tempted to say the move to Crass invigorated the Cravats’ non-commercial proclivities, but a closer listen makes me think Rub Me Out continues developing some of the ideas on Off the Beach. That being said, while the a-side is still not too far off from what the Fall were doing, the song’s eerie horn break is disquieting in a different way, one of the strangest and most exciting moments in their music that I’ve heard so far. The b-side, “When We Will Fall,” is more conventional still, an upbeat, punky song driven by a nervous but infectious horn line that’s not far off from “Burning Bridges.” You hear some electronic squiggles buzzing around the edges of the mix, though, and there’s a lengthy break in the middle where they wander off into Room to Live-era Fall land again, with spooky, whispered voices that sound like they might belong to Eve Libertine. Revisiting this single to write this piece, I think it’s the best of the three I own, with strong production and a confrontational aesthetic that hits like a jolt of electricity.

Rub Me Out also features great design work. The other two singles had interesting sleeve designs, but the Cravats take full advantage of Crass’s default 6-panel fold-out poster sleeve. The band poses with strange costumes and homemade instruments in front of their logo backdrop, which I’ve only recently realized is just the copyright symbol (clever fuckers). My favorite part of the design, though, are the text collages made of rub-on letters (which fits the theme of “Rub Me Out”), which are harmoniously chaotic, similar to a Jackson Pollack canvas. They also bring this lettering style to Crass Records’ address on the sleeve’s rear panel, and it looks cool as fuck.

It feels strange to write a lengthy staff pick when I have such a scattershot knowledge of the band. It’s like writing an essay about an ornate gothic cathedral when I’ve only peeked inside through a keyhole. But that’s the way things go. I remember checking out the Cravats’ first album, In Toytown, on streaming services, which also features several of their Small Wonder singles as bonus tracks. However, the Cravats’ dense and challenging music might work best on singles. Listening to several Cravats tracks in a row feels like channel surfing, where things change before you have the time to orient yourself. Plus, if other Cravats singles have packaging design as strong as Rub Me Out, that’s an element I would hate to miss out on. So, I guess I’ll go on picking up these Cravats records as I come across them.

The other night we canceled Scarecrow practice last minute so we could drink beers and spin records with a bunch of our hardcore-loving homies. I had a great time, and I was stoked to rifle through other people’s boxes of old hardcore 7”s. Of course, there were some items that made me very jealous, but it also made me come home and see my box of 7”s I’ve bought in the past year or two with fresh eyes. In honor of that, here are thoughts on four 7”s I’ve listened to recently.

Desperate Children flexi (1986, Joy Riders Records)

One-off flexi from this little-known band from the noise-core hotbed of Kyushu, Japan. Like Gai and Swankys, there’s more than a little bouncy, melodic punk in Desperate Children’s sound. While they don’t have the over the top intensity of those two bands, the two a-side tracks are odd enough to hold my attention. The b-side track puts the melody center stage, and even if you prefer the noisier stuff, you gotta agree with the sentiment of the track’s title: “I Love Punk.” I always loved the cover art on this one too… the crispness of the graphic design is eye-catching and makes an interesting contrast with the music.

Śmierć Kliniczna: ASP / Jestem Ziarnkiem Piasku (1984, Tonpress Records)

A handful of old Polish punk bands got EPs out on the state-run Tonpress label, and I always pick them up when I can. They’re usually cheap, and the bands are often super interesting. Like Dezerter, Śmierć Kliniczna had already been a band for several years when they released this single, and their sound is distinctive and complex… they can play their asses off! Of course I don’t know what the lyrics are about, but the dark complexity of the music reminds me of outsider hardcore like the Crucifucks or Power of the Spoken Word. Very cool.

The Expelled: No Life No Future 7” (1982, Riot City Records)

“Dreaming” is the best song in this little batch of 7”s that I’m looking at today, a dark and hooky track with memorable guitar and vocal melodies. The other two tracks are more aggressive, but the playing is looser. That gives these songs an off the rails energy that I like, but the hooks don’t land as hard as they do on “Dreaming.” I think I’m going to spin that again right now.

Riot Squad: Don’t Be Denied 7” (1983, Rot Records)

I’m a sucker for a beater UK82 picture sleeve… something about these records just feels right when they’re all bent and dog-eared like this one. This is the third Riot Squad single I’ve picked up, nabbing their first two records at shops over the years. I think Don’t Be Denied is the best one, though… just classic-sounding UK82 punk with chanting vocals, simple riffs, and a shit-ton of punk attitude. They put the mid-paced song up front and it’s cool, but it’s the three rippers that form the balance of the record that get me going. Exploited fans are particularly encouraged to check out this EP.

Gauze: 言いたかねえけど目糞鼻糞 12” (2021, XXX Records)

Recently, copies of Gauze’s 6th album hit US shores. If you follow punks on Instagram, you’ve likely seen people showing off their copies. My sincere apologies to anyone who was hoping to get a copy from Sorry State. I dropped the ball and didn’t look into getting copies until it was too late, but hopefully we can rectify that in the future and carry the next pressing. Luckily for me, I could order a copy for myself from the venerable Velted Regnub distribution.

Much like when Gauze released their 5th album, the reactions I’ve seen online have been mixed. Lots of people are excited about this new chapter in Gauze’s legacy, but there are always haters. I’m not sure what people could be looking for in a Gauze album that they don’t hear here, but I love the record. I’ve seen several people say that the first song on the record is whack but the rest of it is good, but when I listen to the record, I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s so different about the first track. Maybe I’m missing something?

The word I keep coming back to when people ask me my thoughts on this album is “anthemic.” The anthemic qualities of Gauze’s music have always been cut off to me as someone who doesn’t speak Japanese, but I can tell by the way their fans sing along when I watch videos of their shows that their songs have always been anthemic. However, this new album seems to give the vocals more of a spotlight than previous records, with even a sung a capella part. Unexpected, but brilliant as always, if you ask me.

While I’m still formulating my thoughts on the record, I thought it might be interesting to reflect on what makes Gauze so great. Those of us who love Gauze revere them, which probably confuses people who have little context for their music. If I didn’t know better, I’d chalk up my passion for Gauze to the way I encountered them. I mail ordered a copy of their 7” on Prank Records when I was in high school, intrigued by the crisp graphic design and the fact that the band was from Japan. A year or so later at a show in Richmond, I complimented Jay from Hardcore Holocaust on his Gauze t-shirt and he encouraged me to buy a bootleg of GISM’s Detestation that had just come out. That record melted my brain as thoroughly as Gauze did, and a lifelong obsession with Japanese punk was born. I remember when I discovered eBay around 1998, one of the first things I did was search for Gauze records, and I ordered a very expensive import copy of their fourth album. As more information about Japanese punk hit the internet, I devoured everything I could and continued to expand my knowledge of the scene.

Back to Gauze. Even for those of us with a particular interest in Japanese punk, Gauze stands head and shoulders above other bands. Why? Here are four things I think contribute to Gauze’s legendary status:

Longevity

Having released their first recordings on 1982’s City Rockers compilation, Gauze is one of Japan’s longest-running punk bands. Their first album, 1985’s Fuck Heads, came out on the legendary ADK label, which was run by Tam from the Stalin. Their 1986 and 1991 albums came out on the equally legendary Selfish Records, the label that released much of the seminal music that shapes people’s understanding of Japanese hardcore to this day. Thus, Gauze is a throughline connecting almost the entire history of Japanese punk. Gauze’s longevity may mean even more for Japanese hardcore than it does for other scenes, given the deferential and courteous nature of Japanese culture and language. Also, while plenty of bands from the initial explosions of punk and hardcore are still going in some capacity, Gauze is one of the few who have done so with minimal changes in lineup and sound. Gauze has never put out a pop record, never made a video for MTV, and never deviated from hardcore’s narrow path. In other words, Gauze has never sucked.

Style

To put it simply, no band has ever sounded like Gauze. This is particularly true of everything they recorded after their landmark second album, 1986’s Equalizing Distort. When you drop the needle on a Gauze record, you know it is them instantly and without question. Further, while every semi-famous punk band has its imitators and acolytes, I’m not aware of any band that has cracked the code for how to write a song that sounds like Gauze. Plenty of people imitate Death Side or Bastard or Judgement with some success, but it appears Gauze is the only band that can make Gauze songs.

Mystery

Speaking of Death Side, Bastard, and Judgement, while all those bands have played reunion shows and even played in the US, Gauze remains indifferent to whatever the West might offer. Gauze toured the UK in 1989 (a live set performed in Scotland appeared as the b-side of their 3rd album) and played three US shows in 1996 (on this tour they recorded the Prank 7” that introduced me to the band). However, those trips seem to have satisfied Gauze’s international ambitions. While Prank wrangled a US release for their 5th album in 2007, finding physical copies of Gauze’s releases or seeing the band live has entailed meeting them on their turf. Even in Japan they seem to exist as a scene unto themselves, playing the same clubs again and again with seemingly no aim to expand their passionately devoted core audience. Press both in and out of Japan has been minimal, with the few Gauze interviews I’ve seen eliciting only curt and enigmatic responses from the band. In the absence of reliable info, legends about Gauze have proliferated in the rumor mill. My favorite of these is that Gauze practices consist of the band playing every song they have ever written without stopping, a feat of near-superhuman strength. Which brings me to my final point.

Musicality

Perhaps this could fly over your head if you aren’t a musician, but Gauze’s mind-boggling technical skill as players is a huge part of their appeal. Part of the distinctiveness of their sound is that few bands can play with anything close to their power and precision, which is more impressive since, at their gigs, they perform their songs in rapid-fire succession with no stopping in between. I’ve seen very few bands have the gumption to cover Gauze, and nearly all of those make it apparent why they shouldn’t have tried. While Gauze’s songwriting isn’t flashy in an Eddie Van Halen / Yngwie Malmsteen kind of way, they are mazes of sharp and dramatic changes in rhythm. Even remembering these changes must be a struggle, much less performing them with Gauze’s airtight level of precision. Not every hardcore band aspires to tightness, but if you have ever played in a hardcore band with that goal, Gauze is the unequivocal gold standard.

I’m sure other Gauze fanatics have their own relationship with the band, but those are some reasons the band remains so special to me. If you are lucky enough to be discovering Gauze for the first time, jump into their discography at whatever point you find most convenient. As I said, they have never sucked. Whether your jumping-on point is the rhythmic mazes of their fourth or fifth LPs, the classics Fuck Heads and Equalizing Distort, their punkier tracks on the City Rocker compilation, or something else, you’re going to get a taste of what makes this band so legendary.

Cate Le Bon: Pompeii 12” (Mexican Summer Records, 2022)

Today it’s 85 degrees and sunny in North Carolina and I think it’s prompted many people to do some early spring cleaning. After driving all the way back from Denver with a big collection last week, the calls have continued to pour in, sending me all over North Carolina buying records. I’m way behind on email and other administrative tasks, and I’m also physically and mentally exhausted, my poor back aching after moving thousands of records. Things aren’t looking good on the rest front, either, as I’m hoping to drive to Richmond Saturday to see the big Tower 7 gig and then Charlotte on Sunday to see Judy & the Jerks. Wish me luck, folks.

Feeling scattered, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I was going to write my staff pick about this week, so I flipped through my recent arrivals stack and remembered I had been planning to write about this new Cate Le Bon album. Much like when I wrote about the BBC Sounds app a few weeks ago, I have misgivings about using my staff pick space to help prop up something that’s been getting plenty of attention from larger outlets like Pitchfork, but fuck it… I like the record.

I first heard Cate Le Bon’s music when I saw her play live. This happened at Raleigh’s Hopscotch Festival a few years ago. Hopscotch has a reputation as one of the more forward-thinking regional music festivals, and it’s always worth going. I know Hopscotch’s bookers keep an eye on the Sorry State newsletter and we can always expect a few of our favorite acts to appear on the bill. While it’s always fun to see the artists I most anticipated, often it’s just as exciting to wander around and see what’s happening, getting recommendations from friends about what they’re excited about and popping in to see what’s up. I’m pretty sure my friend Rich told me to check out Cate Le Bon’s set when she played Hopscotch a few years ago.

Hopscotch takes place in mid-September in Raleigh, when it is around 350 degrees outside with 800% humidity (that is, unless we’re being bombarded by a hurricane because, you know, that’s right in the thick of hurricane season). It’s hot and humid as shit, and you’ll sweat through your clothes just from walking around between venues. The problem only gets compounded if any of the bands prompt you to do any sort of dancing, slamming or otherwise. One big draw of catching Cate Le Bon’s set was that it took place in Memorial Hall, a traditional concert venue that’s set up for symphonies and opera more than rock bands. Which meant, importantly, air conditioning and cushy seats. I don’t think a full spa treatment would have been much more comfortable than sitting in a comfortable chair in an air conditioned space at that point in the fest.

Already feeling sweet relief course through my aching, overheated body, Le Bon’s set was revelatory that night. I hadn’t heard her music before, and between the perfect setting and just the right combination of mind-altering substances, I fell into her music like a warm bed. Her band dressed in concert black, she played a set drawn mostly from her then most recent album Crab Day, the stage littered with unconventional instruments that created a heady mix of modern-sounding synths and drum machines and strings and wind instruments that felt more at home in the fancy concert hall. It was one of those magical concert experiences that makes you a fan for life, and I spent an enjoyable few months after the gig listening to the majestic Crab Day.

I was looking forward to Pompeii, even checking out the digital singles released before the album. At first it sounded gentler and less angular than Crab Day, but at some point I got over that and now I revel in its sweetness. I saw someone mention that the record was influenced by Japanese City Pop, and I can see that in its placid yet modern grooves. While Crab Day’s art rock approach is closer to my usual preferences, I appreciate Le Bon’s songwriting so much that I’m willing to go along for the ride as she explores other sounds. Not having much frame of reference for Le Bon’s music, I can’t authoritatively tell you that this is the best album in its style to come out recently, but I can tell you I quite enjoy it, and that there’s enough grit mixed in with the sweetness to satisfy this tired, aging punk.

Mandy, Indiana: … EP (2021, Fire Talk Records)

I spent most of the past four days driving alone from Denver, Colorado to Raleigh, North Carolina, about 1,600 miles. On the long drive I binged on podcasts and albums, and I had a great time.

At one point I was listening to an interview with Fred Armisen on Samantha Bee’s podcast, and she asked him if there was a particular way he liked to listen to music. His answer was that he loved to listen to music while traveling, like in a car or on an airplane, because he felt like he could devote his full attention to the music and get lost in it. This has always been the case for me, too. I think part of it is that I feel like I always need to be doing something. Sitting there, just listening to music feels like an indulgence, but when I’m in transit, I’m already “doing” something, so it sets free whatever part of my brain craves productivity and lets it focus on the music that I’m listening to. Exercise works in a similar way, and in the pre-COVID days when I had a gym membership, I loved zoning out to music while on the elliptical machine.

I have many fond memories tied to traveling and music. Growing up in the country, I’ve always had long commutes to school, work, and virtually everywhere else. When I was a kid, the radio was always playing in my parents’ cars, and once I was old enough to drive, the car was a rare private space where I could listen to whatever music I wanted as loud as I wanted without worrying about disturbing anyone else. I also remember many late nights riding around with my best friend Billy blasting bands like Less than Jake and Bad Religion, screaming ourselves hoarse as we sang along. I can’t count the number of artists and albums I’ve fallen in love with in the car.

On this trip from Denver, I spent a lot of time listening to the BBC Sounds app I wrote about last week, and I’m pretty sure I heard multiple BBC 6 DJs play tracks from Manchester’s Mandy, Indiana. I remember hearing them for the first time when I was driving around Raleigh last week and thinking it sounded pretty cool, then after hearing them multiple times on the trip from Denver, I was intrigued enough to the whole record.

I must have put on … at the perfect time, traveling through the rolling hills of middle-of-nowhere Kentucky just as yet another Red Bull was hitting my system. Mandy, Indiana’s dense polyrhythms perfectly suited my forward momentum, the deep, dub-style bass lines so loud on the rental car stereo system that I could feel my bowels shaking. In the higher registers, Valentine Caulfield’s French-language vocals and a dense maze of whooshing and echoing noises are an aural feast, a wonderland of criss-crossing rhythms and melodies.

I don’t know how you’d describe Mandy, Indiana’s music in terms of style or genre. The closest comparison I can think of is Rakta’s Falha Comum LP, an album I was completely obsessed with when it came out. Like Rakta, Mandy, Indiana’s booming bass lines and dance music grooves remind me of Public Image Ltd, but what they lay over the rhythm section is denser and crazier-sounding. Mandy, Indiana, also seems to take more influence from techno, particularly on the two remix tracks that close this 5-song EP.

Once I got home, I looked up who was pressing and distributing Mandy, Indiana’s vinyl. Rather than just getting one for myself, I ordered a couple of copies for Sorry State, even though it’s well outside our usual wheelhouse. I’m keeping one for myself, but a couple of you might like this and want a copy too.

Over the last few months as Sorry State has gotten busier, I’ve developed a bad habit of working well into the evening. When I finally get into bed, my mind is often still racing and I find it difficult to sleep. When this happens, I like the soothing sounds of someone talking to me in a measured, monotonous way, and I like what they’re talking about to take me as far away as possible from the stressors of my world. I’ve been listening to an audiobook about the history of the ancient world, in which a very professorial (and apparently elderly) British man recites lengthy genealogies of the kings of ancient Egypt, China, the Middle East, and Europe. Another favorite is the History Extra Podcast, where the editors of BBC History Magazine interview history scholars about a wide range of historical topics, some familiar but many of them downright arcane. Another of my favorites is In Our Time, a BBC4 program hosted by Melvin Bragg. It’s a panel show where each week Bragg and three panelists (usually professors) discuss a single topic. Sometimes the topic is from ancient history, sometimes modern science, often the work of a literary writer or philosopher. In Our Time is the perfect sleep aid because it’s just interesting enough to take my mind away from whatever I was thinking about, but dry enough that I’m guaranteed to fall asleep within 15 minutes.

A few weeks ago I made it to the end of an episode of In Our Time (I must have been stressed) and they mentioned the podcast would move from their existing feed to the BBC Sounds app. I was annoyed at having to download a new app, but since I did, I’ve been spending a lot of time with it. The BBC Sounds app seems to round up virtually all the content from the BBC’s various radio stations, along with a bunch of exclusive podcasts. After subscribing to In Our Time, the first thing I did was look for similar “put me to sleep” content, of which there is a motherlode. BBC Radio 4 is all spoken-word programming, and as far as I can tell, most or all of it seems to be on the BBC Sounds app. Last night I listened to a 30-minute documentary about the history of staircases. What more could an insomniac ask for?

The next thing I noticed was that all the BBC’s radio stations stream live on the site. A few weeks ago I drove to Virginia to buy someone’s record collection, leaving around 8AM east coast US time, which is early afternoon in the UK. I can’t remember which channel I pulled up first, but it was a drive-time program with traffic reports from exotic-sounding places. While it wasn’t as dense with music as American radio, the songs they played were stylistically across the board and almost all things I liked. I heard the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner,” XTC’s “Making Plans for Nigel,” TLC’s “No Scrubs,” an 80s Madonna track, and a lovers rock-sounding reggae track from the early 80s, with a few newer-sounding artists sprinkled in whose music I didn’t find offensive. This is shit you would never hear on American terrestrial radio, which is so bad I never turn it on.

My next step deeper into the app, though, was where I found the interesting stuff. Once I realized the Sounds app archives so much radio programming, I started searching for the music specialty shows. I guess it didn’t occur to me to do this at first because I assumed licensing issues would prevent the most interesting content from being available to me. I remember trying to download the iPlayer app for BBC TV years ago only to find it doesn’t work from a US IP address. Similarly, I remember checking out the podcast feed of Desert Island Discs years ago, only to discover the podcast version expunges all the actual songs. However, all the programming in the Sounds app is there in full with the songs intact.

I immediately discovered a few programs I enjoy, which is already too much to keep up with. I’d heard for years that Marc Riley from the Fall was a radio personality and I was able to check out his show. While it’s probably considered middle of the road for punk types, it feels like comfort food to me, featuring lots of 70s punk and glam rock amongst a broad mix of music. He also has newer bands playing in session (like the Peel Sessions everyone knows) and replays classic BBC sessions. The first episode I listened to re-ran a classic Peel Session from Siouxsie and the Banshees. I also got to check out Iggy Pop’s show, another one I’ve been hearing about for years, and enjoyed that. Iggy’s music selections are a bit like Marc Riley’s—“cool” popular music from the last several decades with some more adventurous stuff sprinkled in—but his show is more focused on the music than Riley’s, where there is a lot of banter and DJ-type antics. There’s also a show by John Peel’s son, Tom Ravenscroft, that I’ve enjoyed, though it seems to be focused almost entirely on electronic music. Ravenscroft also has a program where he invites musicians over to browse his father’s legendary record collection and play tracks from it. I haven’t checked that out yet, but I will soon.

My favorite show I’ve discovered so far is Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone, a weekly show featuring “two hours of experimental and avant-garde music.” That description will scare away many people, but the show is rarely abrasive. Actually, it’s quite exciting. He plays older tracks from under-the-radar genres like Canterbury folk, Krautrock, prog, modern classical, and free jazz, and new music by artists who push the limits of genre. I expected to like the older stuff more, but I’ve enjoyed the new music Maconie plays. I love that feeling of hearing something you’ve never heard before, and that’s the feeling this show seems to search for. They land on it more often than not.

So yeah, that’s what I’ve been listening to. I feel weird writing my staff pick about a government funded and managed media institution, but fuck it… I am enjoying it. Like many Americans, I gaze longingly across the pond at the UK’s social democracy (if you can call it that), marveling not only at the perks like socialized medicine and decent public radio and television, but the very idea that the government does things to make regular people’s lives a little better. I know the UK and other countries have more than their share of problems, but that mentality seems so foreign from my perspective in the every-person-for-themselves brutality of the United States. Maybe that’s why so much of the BBC’s programming works so well for carrying me off into a gentle, restful slumber.