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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.

Mercenarias: Cadê As Armas? LP (original 1986, Baratos Afins; reissue 2021, Beat Generation)

We just got in copies of this reissue of Cadê As Armas?, the first album from Brazil’s Mercenárias, and I’ve been spinning it a bunch. I’ve heard these tracks on several previous Mercenarias compilations like 2005’s The Beginning of the End of the World on Soul Jazz Records and the 2018 collection on Nada Nada Discos, but Beat Generation’s reissue marks the first time Cadê As Armas? has been reissued in its original format.

Mercenárias began in 1982 when the punk scene in São Paulo was at a creative peak, with bands like Inocentes, Cólera, Olho Seco, and Ratos de Porão hitting their stride. While Inocentes and Cólera had a lot of UK punk in their sound, the latter bands’ gnarly hardcore is what I think of when I imagine early 80s Brazil… grimy, angry, and above all intense. When you factor in that Brazil’s proto death metal scene with bands like Sepultura and Sarcófago was just a few years away, it seems like brutality must have been the order of the day, but Mercenarias’ music is something else.

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to scrounge up much historical information about the band. Nearly every bio notes the members were students when Mercenarias started, which makes perfect sense… Mercenarias’ music comes off as urbane, particularly when contrasted with the hardcore bands I mentioned above. However, I can’t seem to find much on why the group started or what the members wanted to accomplish. Even the two essays printed in this reissue’s insert (one of them by Joao Gordo, Ratos de Porão’s singer) seem to be from an outside perspective. The sounds of the early Rough Trade Records catalog must have influenced Mercenarias, since their music exudes a sense of art school cool that resembles many of those bands.

While I don’t have much info to fill out Mercenarias’ story, I have some good news: there’s a surprising amount of vintage video footage of the band. Check out this video of “Pânico” live on Brazilian TV, this one of a track from their second album, Trashland, on another Brazilian TV show, this scorching early live version of “Policia,” and their very awesome, very 80s official video for “Pânico.”

Aunt Sally: S/T 12” (original 1977, Vanity Records; reissue 2022, Mesh Key Records)

I pre-ordered this reissue from Mesh Key Records so long ago I had forgotten about it when it arrived on my doorstep last week. The vinyl supply chain issues suck in pretty much every respect, but at least it resulted in a nice little surprise for me.

I hadn’t heard of Aunt Sally when Mesh Key announced their reissue of this 1979 LP. While I think I’m pretty knowledgeable about Japanese hardcore, I know comparatively little about the country’s post-punk scene. When I first listened to Aunt Sally on Bandcamp those many months ago, it sparked a research spree where I learned about a lot of cool stuff, including the Akina Nakamori LP I chose as my staff pick a while back. There are still several records from that research session hanging around on my want list, so if the vinyl gods are with me, this won’t be the last Japanese post-punk LP I write about for one of my staff picks.

Back to Aunt Sally, though. In Bandcamp’s short piece on the group, they wrote about how they were inspired by the Sex Pistols. Aunt Sally’s singer—who later made experimental music under the stage name Phew—flew to London from Japan in 1977 and saw the Sex Pistols live. She was so inspired by the Pistols that, upon returning to Japan, she set about recruiting her own band. It’s crazy how, although Aunt Sally was based thousands of miles from London in Osaka, Japan, their origin story so closely resembles that of so many English post-punk bands.

Like a lot of those English post-punk bands, Aunt Sally sounds nothing like the Pistols. While plenty of second-wave punk bands took a lot of inspiration from the Pistols, it’s fascinating that so many people saw the Pistols as this watershed moment of inspiration, but it never occurred to them to copy what the Pistols were doing. It’s like the Sex Pistols were this bomb that blew open a door, allowing an entire generation of musicians to step through into a kind of Narnia where their innate creativity was unleashed.

And maybe because the Sex Pistols’ roar was so mighty, ratcheting up rock’s loudness, pomposity, and masculinity to absurd levels, it created space for the music Aunt Sally made. It’s similar to the music that Rough Trade put out in its early years, and if you’re a fan of bands like the Raincoats, Kleenex, Essential Logic, and Delta 5, you’ll no doubt love this Aunt Sally album. Like those records (as well as bands like Gang of Four, Wire, and Joy Division), Aunt Sally, in my ways, hearkens back to the pre-punk art rock of bands like Roxy Music, David Bowie, and early Genesis, albeit without the aforementioned pomposity and masculinity that the Pistols made to seem so ridiculous. Aunt Sally’s music strikes me as forward-thinking, cerebral, and unafraid of delicacy, yet still somehow punk in spirit.

It looks like, as of right now, there are still a few copies of the record for sale on Mesh Key’s Bandcamp site. The first pressing comes with a bonus live 7” that won’t come with subsequent pressings, and the songs on that are interesting and worth having. The first pressing was only available through Mesh Key’s Bandcamp site, but I’m hoping that when this gets repressed we can bring in some copies for Sorry State.

Kalefa Sanneh: Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres book (2021, Penguin)

My house doesn’t have central heat, and it’s been quite cold here in North Carolina (well, cold for us at least), so I’ve been reading a lot. Last week I plowed through this book by former New York Times pop music columnist Kalefa Sanneh, and I thought y’all might want to know about it.

Sanneh’s conceit is right in the book’s subtitle. He gives us capsule histories of seven different genres that were and are popular in the 20th and 21st centuries, which add up, more or less, to a history of popular music during that time period. It’s such a straightforward idea that it’s surprising no one has done it before, but part of the issue is that artists and music writers are often reluctant to talk about genre. Artists don’t like their work to be limited or pigeonholed by genre, and critics tend to view the best music as somehow transcending genre… that if something is “just” a country record or a dance record that it can’t be great. Sanneh’s book takes these biases head-on.

What is genre, though? Ostensibly, genre refers to categories of artistic works based on form, subject, or style. In literature, epic poetry and sonnets are different genres… one is very long and deals with heroism; the other is exactly 14 lines and deals with romantic love. In popular culture, though, genre means so much more than that. Just look at the term “genre fiction” in the literary world. Today, “genre fiction” refers to literary works that fit into established genre categories like science fiction, romance, crime, etc. However, “genre fiction” is typically distinguished from “literary fiction,” which somehow transcends genre, the implication being that genre fiction is formulaic or less interesting.

Much like genre fiction, musical genre is not strictly about formal categorization, but just as much about who listens to particular artists or styles of music. This is rooted in the ways stores categorize records, as well as radio programming, where stations target a certain demographic profile and serve them with a particular style of music. Thus, R&B became music that black people listened to. Country music became music for rural white people. The interesting thing, though—and this is where much of the tension in Sanneh’s narrative comes from—is that both things, the musical styles and the communities they serve, are changing constantly. Obviously, you can listen to country music from the 1950s and country music from the 2020s and they sound very different (albeit with some through lines). The demographics also change. Rock and roll started out as black music, but was basically whitewashed over the course of the 60s. Country music’s changes were less dramatic, but changing from targeting rural white people to suburban white people had a big effect on the genre’s style and politics. These changes were always gradual, anything but synchronous, and generated a lot of controversy as they were happening. Sanneh looks at the careers of stars like Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, and many others, illustrating how they navigated the changing landscape, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much.

One of the seven genres Sanneh examines is punk, and obviously I was particularly interested in this chapter. The book’s tone shifts with this chapter, the narrative becoming much more personal because Sanneh grew up in the punk scene in the early and mid-90s in the northeastern US. He covers the standard histories of how punk developed in the US and UK and how it transformed through the 80s, 90s, and beyond, but really the chapter is about how Sanneh himself engaged with punk and what he took from it as his listening habits widened after his teen years. As I was reading, I couldn’t figure out how I felt about the book shifting to more of a first-person perspective… I worried it overemphasized parts of the punk scene Sanneh experienced himself. For instance, Sanneh writes about one revelatory Fugazi gig he saw in the early 90s, which gets more ink than the Sex Pistols’ entire career. In another of the book’s most memorable passages, Sanneh writes about training at the Harvard radio station, which was a crash course / boot camp in punk history. Each week, the station’s elders assigned ten albums, and the trainees would have to listen to those albums, write up their thoughts, and then the group would have heated discussions about their impressions. (This sounds like heaven to me BTW.) It’s interesting that while record company executives, radio programmers, and (to a lesser extent) journalists policed other genres’ formal boundaries, in punk this happens at a grassroots, word-of-mouth level. Further, Sanneh’s punk education seems to foreground skepticism about the very idea of genre, since they encouraged debate at these meetings. It seems like the station’s elders weren’t so much policing punk’s boundaries as pressing their initiates to think through what punk meant to them, and to articulate and defend their reasoning.

Anyway, the book is really good. I was riveted and would have read the whole thing in one sitting if that were possible. I should also note that I haven’t spoiled anything for you… there’s plenty more insight in there, particularly if your interests extend beyond punk.

I think part of what Sanneh tries to do in the book is rehabilitate the idea of genre within music discourse / criticism, or at least to establish it as a useful lens through which you can look at music. I used to hate thinking about genre. I remember when Sorry State opened, we didn’t have genre-based sections, just new records, used records, and bargain bin. When we introduced genre sections, we saw a spike in sales, because most people weren’t interested in digging through a bunch of records they didn’t care about in order to find the rock, hip-hop, or metal they were interested in. The store’s staff still gets into debates over this… a long-running one is whether we should have a goth section at the store, and if so, what records would be in it? What music is and isn’t goth?

I also grapple with genre in my writing for the Sorry State newsletter. A lot of the music we carry and that I write about explicitly engages with the idea of genre. Sanneh points out in his book again and again how people use genre as a kind of social lever to raise up or push down certain artists or trends, or to include or exclude certain people from an in-group. (For instance, it’s hard for white artists to get played on R&B radio, and even harder for black artists to get on country radio. Does that mean Justin Timberlake’s solo music isn’t R&B? Or Lil Nas X isn’t country?) I remember when Disclose was putting out records, reviewers often dismissed them as Discharge copycats; this was doubly the case for bands like No Fucker who picked up Disclose’s mantle. Eventually, this style of music became so popular that you couldn’t simply dismiss… you had to come up with some way to understand or justify its popularity lest you look like an old man yelling at a cloud. This happens with a lot of genres; a new trend emerges and the powers that be dismiss it until it gets so popular that they have to contend with it (especially if they want the money it generates). I’m personally very uninterested in policing genre boundaries. I don’t want to be the one who decides whether something is hardcore or not. My policy, insofar as I have one, is to let the work frame how I contextualize it. If an artist seems to engage with the idea of genre, then I’ll write about it; if they aren’t, then I won’t. I certainly wouldn’t want to use genre as a cudgel to beat artists who are too close (or not close enough) to some imagined ideal.

One more aside: I’ve noticed that in some circles it’s become something of a meme to say “d-beat is a drumbeat, not a genre.” This annoys the shit out of me. D-beat has established stylistic parameters (going well beyond just the drumbeat), a community that coalesces around the sound, a canon of classic releases, and even its own fashion sense. If that doesn’t qualify something as a genre, I don’t know what does. There is no Moses that comes down from the mountain to certify the existence of a new genre. To say that d-beat is any less of a genre than grindcore or alt-country or Soundcloud Rap is just absurd.

A few weeks ago I grabbed this copy of the Stupids’ Violent Nun EP out of a small buy that came through the store, thinking I would listen to it once and then bring it back to sell to someone else. However, I’ve played it over and over. I actually have a lot of thoughts about the Stupids, so I figured this record would make for a good staff pick.

If you had asked me my opinion on the Stupids before I picked up this copy of Violent Nun, I would have told you they got better with time, starting off as a fairly mediocre hardcore band and maturing into a pretty good skate rock band. I spent some time revisiting their albums over the past day or so and I largely stand by that assessment (with some revisions I will explain below), but I felt like it was important to return to the records because it’s been a very long time since I listened to them and my tastes have changed a lot since then.

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned many times, I spent my early 20s obsessed with the band Leatherface, not only collecting their records but also looking for and listening to other bands that sounded like them. Leatherface was so influential that there are plenty of threads you can pull relating to bands whom they influenced or who influenced them, but one of the most interesting veins of music I hit was a group of melodic hardcore bands from the UK in the late 80s. The most obviously connected band is HDQ (short for “Hung, Drawn, and Quartered”), which was the teenage band of Leatherface guitarist Dickie Hammond. HDQ started as a UK82-influenced punk band, perhaps on the more melodic end of that spectrum, but by the end of their run as a band, on records like Sinking and Soul Finder, they had evolved into a very melodic band that makes perfect sense as an antecedent for Leatherface.

There were several bands who made a similar transition from hardcore to a more earnest melodic punk style. Another favorite was Exit Condition, who released a ripping 7” on Pusmort Records before going full Hüsker Dü on their Days of Wild Skies album. I’d gotten into hardcore as a teen and still loved it even as I was exploring all of this more melodic music, so finding bands who straddled those styles felt like a special discovery that I was uniquely positioned to appreciate, and I gobbled up anything I could find from the late 80s UK. It helped that the music seemed out of fashion, so the records were generally very cheap. I think a lot of them still are. For whatever reason, though, at some point I got my fill of this melodic style and I rarely listen to it nowadays. Even my Leatherface records rarely see any time on my turntable. Maybe I’ve changed, or maybe the world has changed, my tastes tending toward the brutal and/or confounding as society has drifted in those directions.

When I first came to the Stupids, I was viewing them through that lens that helped me to appreciate HDQ and Exit Condition. While I prided myself on liking most of these bands before and after their transitions away from hardcore, the Stupids’ hardcore material always sounded sloppy to me, with too many jokey tracks that took me out of the hardcore groove. Part of the problem might have been that I was listening to these releases on Boss Tuneage’s CD reissues that came out in the late 2000s. Those CDs were packed to the gills with bonus material, and while it’s great to have all of that stuff, listening to any of the discs in their entirety was a bit of a slog. This was particularly true of the earlier material, which wasn’t so much about hooks as short, manic bursts of speed.

Revisiting the Stupids’ discography over the past couple of days, I’m still impressed with their melodic material. While there are hints of melody from the beginning, something seems to click with the song “The Memory Burns,” the Hüsker Dü-ish track that opens their second album.* While I still wasn’t really feeling Peruvian Vacation this time around, “The Memory Burns” is still a standout track. The third album, Van Stupid, is good but suffers a little from the sloppiness and overabundance of jokey tracks that keeps me from embracing Peruvian Vacation, but on the final album of their original run, Jesus Meets the Stupids, everything comes together for a standout skate rock record. There’s even a good amount of straight up ripping hardcore on it. The Stupids’ 2008 comeback single, Feel the Suck, is also excellent, the a-side up there with “The Memory Burns.” I’ve never gotten around to checking out the subsequent reunion album.

One more quick digression: I have a few interesting “small world” type connections with the Stupids that might make me hold them a little closer to my heart. After the Stupids broke up, guitarist Ed Shred continued down the melodic punk path with a string of excellent bands like Sink, Bad Dress Sense, and K-Line, some of whom I’d investigated and blogged about, which led to a correspondence with Ed. When I briefly lived in London in 2008, I went to see Pissed Jeans at the Grosvenor and it was sold out, and somehow I ran into Ed at the pub downstairs and spent the entire evening talking punk with him and his mates. I ran into Ed a few years ago when he was in Raleigh for a memorial show for a friend of his who had moved to Raleigh in the 80s and become an important part of the music scene here. Oh, and on the Stupids’ US tour in the 80s, they played a show at the Fallout Shelter in Raleigh, which is just a block away from Sorry State. Like I said, small world.

Back to Violent Nun. It rips! When I read about the Stupids, a comment I see again and again is that they sounded more like a US hardcore band than an English or European one. I imagine Violent Nun is the record people are referring to when they say that. While bands like Ripcord and Heresy worshipped American hardcore but never sounded exactly like it, Violent Nun has that perfect early 80s-style hardcore production that I can’t get enough of. I’ve always found Peruvian Vacation (the record that came after Violent Nun) rhythmically shaky, but Violent Nun is a locked in ripper, not mechanically tight but powerful. There’s a little of the jokey element, but the proportions are just right, with the focus on tearing it up.

So yeah, new opinion on the Stupids: all eras.

* I avoided writing the name of the Stupids’ second album because its title might offend some people. Which reminds me of another anecdote. People my age who don’t have kids may not know this, but the word “stupid” has become taboo in elementary school settings, with good reason I suppose. I remember an episode of Turned Out a Punk when Damian told a story about one of his kids reacting with shock and horror when he found out a band had named themselves the Stupids. Which is funny because the kid’s father sings for a band called Fucked Up. It’s funny how people’s definition of profanity changes with time and shifting cultural interests and preoccupations.

Another year is in the books and it’s time to engage in that long-standing music nerd tradition of the “best of” list. While the list format seems to imply there is some sort of science or coherent method, I shot from the hip. I flipped through the records I bought this year and if it felt right, I added the title to my (eventually very long) short list. Then I took that short list and narrowed it down to 10 titles that felt the most important to me. The 10 records below are the ones I spent the most time listening to, but it feels like there’s something else to it. This collection of records seems to speak to this historical moment. I’m struck by the fact that, while I like to think I have a pretty broad palette for music, noisy punk and hardcore dominates this list. Obviously, that’s a style I gravitate toward, but that music also feels important right now because we’re living in such fucked up times. The Tower 7, Horrendous 3D, and Fairytale records are the sound of the giant machine we all live within grinding its gears, teetering on the edge of breakdown. I can’t bear to listen to anything that sounds slick to me in these times because it feels like a farce… how can you live on that surface level when we are surrounded by so much death, sickness, and pain? Not that there isn’t beauty too, but the records that felt the most beautiful were fashioned from rougher, bleaker material.

Top Records

Tower 7: Peace on Earth 12” (Roach Leg)

If I had to pick one record from 2021 as my favorite, it would either be the Tower 7 or the Morbo LP. Tower 7’s gritty, gnarly hardcore was the perfect music for this year. Yes, the record is currently hard to get, but that isn’t because they’re some kind of record collector hype band… it’s just because this is the music that everyone wants and needs to hear right now.

Morbo: ¿A Quién Le Echamos La Culpa? 12” (Cintas Pepe)

When you listen to Tower 7, you wander into the shit. When you listen to Morbo, you crack open a beer while sitting atop the rubble. While it’s gritty as fuck, it’s the one record on this list that gives me something like pure joy.

Horrendous 3D: The Gov. And Corps. Are Using Psycho​-​Electronic Weaponry To Manipulate You And Me​... 7” (Whisper in Darkness)

Fast and fucked will always be cool, but slightly less fast and extremely fucked sounded great to me this year. No one did it better than Horrendous 3D.

Yleiset Syyt: Umpikujamekanismi 7” (Open Up and Bleed Recordings)

Like Morbo, Finland’s Yleiset Syyt has a classic sound that makes me feel like I’m young again, taking my first plunges into the depths of 80s hardcore.

Quarantine: Agony 12” (Damage United)

A record that hits you like a 300-pound linebacker.

Electric Chair: Social Capital 7” (Iron Lung Records)

Electric Chair rules so fucking much. Very stoked I got to see them live a couple of times too, because as good as their records are, you gotta see them in person to get the full experience.

Illiterates: S/T 12” (Kill Enemy Records)

This young band from Pittsburgh came out of nowhere and dropped this catchy, punky take on 80s hardcore.

Amyl & the Sniffers: Comfort to Me 12” (ATO Records)

This record is the outlier on my list, but I listened to it so much I had to include it. I’ve loved Amyl & the Sniffers since I first heard them, and I remain befuddled by how many people hate on them. Perhaps Comfort to Me clicked with me because the Sniffers have essentially turned into a hardcore band without losing any of the swagger or catchiness of their earlier records.

Fairytale: S/T 7” (Desolate Records)

Like a lot of the bands on this list, Fairytale plays noisy hardcore, but their music has this ethereal mystery about it I can’t get enough of.

Nervous SS / Ratcage: Skopje Vs Sheffield 12” (La Vida Es Un Mus)

This is an ideal situations where a split is greater than the sum of its two sides. I always start with Nervous SS’s assault of intricate, explosive riffs, for which Ratcage’s equally ferocious but more anthemic songs provide the perfect chaser.

Notable Reissues

As always, I bought a lot of reissues this year. Here are the ones I enjoyed the most. Many of them are as notable for their packaging as for the music (Neos, Neon Christ, the Worst, Partisans), some of them are pretty straightforward repros that arrived at the perfect time to take over my turntable (English Dogs, the Clean, Burning Image), while others introduced me to bands I never would have known about otherwise (Karma Sutra, Burning Image, Glitter Symphony).

• Spike in Vain: Death Drives a Cadillac 12” (Scat)
• Neos: Three Teens Hellbent on Speed 12” (Supreme Echo)
• Karma Sutra: Be Cruel With Your Past And All Who Seek To Keep You There 12” (Sealed Records)
• Hated: 4 Song EP / Pressure 7”s (Meathouse Productions)
• Nog Watt: Fear 7” (Final Doomsday Records)
• English Dogs: To the Ends of the Earth 12” (Bomb All Records)
• Neon Christ: 1984 12” (Southern Lord)
• Assault & Battery: The Complete Session, May 1981 12” (Alonas Dream)
• Burning Image: The Final Conflict 7” (Going Underground)
• The Clean: Tally Ho 7” / Boodle Boodle Boodle 12” (Merge)
• The Worst: The Worst of the Worst 12” (Radio Raheem)
• Glitter Symphony / Sizon: In Green Furs 12” (Meat House Productions)
• Artistic Decline: 4 Song EP 7” (Meat House Productions)
• The Partisans: Anarchy in Alkatraz / No Future Demos 80 82 12” (Sealed Records)
• Pyhäkoulu: In Retrospect 12” (Svart Records)

Favorite Zines

Make a zine! This list should be longer.

General Speech

Maggot Brain

Razorblades & Aspirin

My War

The “Short List”

Here is my “short list” of artists whose work I enjoyed this year. I’m sure there are things I’m forgetting and this list is already way too long, but here it is anyway:

Straw Man Army, Urin, Vivisected Numbskulls, Hologram, Algara, Suffocating Madness, Chain Whip, Mujeres Podridas, Sial, Psico Galera, Knowso, Slant, Smirk, Imploders, Gauze, Erik Nervous, 80HD, Canal Irreal, Headcheese, Reek Minds, Children with Dog Feet, SQK Fromme, Prision Postumo, Spread Joy, New Vogue, Collate, CDG, Reckoning Force, Personal Damage, GG King

Final Flex

I usually think of buying expensive old records as a source of shame rather than pride, but since everyone else is doing it, here are some items I acquired in 2021 that I think were pretty cool:

Elvis side:

Jesus side: