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From the minds that brought you Research Reactor Corp. and Tee Vee Repairmann...comes 3D & The Holograms.
Our take: This debut 12” from 3D & the Holograms is a real meeting of worlds. The band is a trans-Pacific lockdown project borne of emailing riffs and beats back and forth, its membership features egg punk royalty (members of Research Reactor Corp and Tee Vee Repairman), it’s on Roach Leg Records, and it got a review in Pitchfork. Wild! It’s not wrong to say 3D & the Holograms represents a melding of Roach Leg’s shit-fi aesthetic with egg punk (which is lo-fi in its own right), but 3D & the Holograms is so much more than two things smashed together. For a short record, it covers a lot of ground and the songs do a lot of different things. Some songs are purely harsh and abrasive, but 3D & the Holograms doesn’t shy away from melody, particularly for catchy guitar leads. Some of these melodies are even pretty; my favorite track is the instrumental “3D Theme,” which reminds me of “Talk to Me Summer,” the instrumental track on Screeching Weasel’s Anthem for a New Tomorrow. At the same time, though, I get the impression that 3D & the Holograms appreciates the wild and raw sounds of early Italian hardcore bands like Wretched, Indigesti, and Negazione. For me, their music is at its strongest when those two sides of the band push against each other, like on the aforementioned “3D Theme” and the similarly melodic “MS-DOS.” For Sorry State / North Carolina punk heads, 3D & the Holograms also reminds me of Menthol, the pre-Public Acid and Mutant Strain group whose Plastic Garden cassette we put out back in 2015. I’m not sure how many people share my taste for both melodic punk and nasty, abrasive hardcore, but if you do, I think you’ll agree this is a special record.
Our take: This debut 12” from 3D & the Holograms is a real meeting of worlds. The band is a trans-Pacific lockdown project borne of emailing riffs and beats back and forth, its membership features egg punk royalty (members of Research Reactor Corp and Tee Vee Repairman), it’s on Roach Leg Records, and it got a review in Pitchfork. Wild! It’s not wrong to say 3D & the Holograms represents a melding of Roach Leg’s shit-fi aesthetic with egg punk (which is lo-fi in its own right), but 3D & the Holograms is so much more than two things smashed together. For a short record, it covers a lot of ground and the songs do a lot of different things. Some songs are purely harsh and abrasive, but 3D & the Holograms doesn’t shy away from melody, particularly for catchy guitar leads. Some of these melodies are even pretty; my favorite track is the instrumental “3D Theme,” which reminds me of “Talk to Me Summer,” the instrumental track on Screeching Weasel’s Anthem for a New Tomorrow. At the same time, though, I get the impression that 3D & the Holograms appreciates the wild and raw sounds of early Italian hardcore bands like Wretched, Indigesti, and Negazione. For me, their music is at its strongest when those two sides of the band push against each other, like on the aforementioned “3D Theme” and the similarly melodic “MS-DOS.” For Sorry State / North Carolina punk heads, 3D & the Holograms also reminds me of Menthol, the pre-Public Acid and Mutant Strain group whose Plastic Garden cassette we put out back in 2015. I’m not sure how many people share my taste for both melodic punk and nasty, abrasive hardcore, but if you do, I think you’ll agree this is a special record.