ELECTRON PANIC

 

When most people come across a tape like this, they just keep walking. I don't. When I come across a tape like this, I wonder.....because you just never know. It probably won't change my life, it might not even enrich my life, but curiosity is a powerful beast, you know? So I dust it off, squint to read the faded labels and then pop it in the deck hoping it plays - and if it does play then I listen to something that logically no one should have ever heard again. And sometimes? Sometimes it's instantly apparent that I have made the right decision. The first side is titled Electron Flagration, a collection of ambient and electronic experimental sounds that instantly validate my curiosity. Primitive electro-prog periodically invaded by soundtrack scores and the previous inhabitants of the cassette....an indescribably brilliant listen. Panic In Detroit on the flip is a Detroit-themed proto-punk mix masterfully curated and packed with hits, I almost presented it as one untitled track so you could listen the way I did (probably should have, actually). It probably didn't change my life, but do I feel enriched? Yes....yes I do. 

ELECTRON FLAGRATION // PANIC IN DETROIT

VIVID SEKT

 

Maybe it's odd to wax nostalgic about a 'current' era, but then I realize that 2009 was two or three punk generations ago - shit, Jan's Room was not even a decade old when I learned about hardcore so I'm really talking about the before times when I blab about bands that were playing fifteen years ago. And fifteen years ago it felt like a damn rebirth. There were the Silenzio Statico ponx in LA, SF and Oakland felt like the same scene (even though SF really only had Thrillhouse to compete with the energy of East Bay warehouse gigs) and you could get wild at HOTDR in San Jose or roll up to Sac....and there was Portland. Not like that place wasn't already on the map, but the punks were doing something different there MORAL HEX, ARCTIC FLOWERS, BOG PEOPLE...and VIVID SEKT. I posted this demo when The Escape was only a couple of months old and when I came across a double copy a few weeks back I felt like I was catching up with an old friend. This particular brand of forceful, straight forward punk tempered with UK anarcho sounded like nothing else at the time, and when you listen to day it's almost as if VIVID SEKT are (still) standing determinedly mid stream just letting decades of sonic trends flow past them. They're awkward in the most juvenile way, a presentation that requires concentration results in tracks like "Horde" that are absolutely timeless. 

VIVID SEKT

PECAH KEPALA

 

PECAH KEPALA are a low, muffled rumble coming at you like an mudslide of sound. Churning, squirming, suffocating Jakarta hardcore - would have been worth the 12hr flight just to see them tear up the floor for fifteen minutes. Can you imagine Jonestown Aloha! mixed with Everything Falls Apart? PECAH KEPALA can.....hell, PECAH KEPALA did. 

DEMO 2013

MYSTIQUE

 

Maybe 2020 did 'em in like it did a lot of other bands, but I never heard shit from MYSTIQUE after this 2019 burner. I mean, maybe it's just as well since this shit is flawless and you'd hate to see (hear) them follow it up with a stinker, as unlikely as that sounds after blasting "Pressure Of Steel Hands" and realizing that you are in fact strong enough to conquer the day before you. That's what MYSTIQUE does - they sound like they're physically pushing and pulling you at the same time, just to make sure you get the fukkn message one way or another. Forceful femme vocals and that UK82-by-way-of-power-crust swinging stomp that permeates sooooo much modern USDIY punk (this is not a complaint - merely an observation); there are only four songs here and maybe these four songs are all we're ever gonna get but....if you're gonna go fast, then at least go hard, right?

DEMO 2019

CHRONIC DISEASE

 

I don't mind being able to (correctly) just a book by its cover sometimes, and this tape from CHRONIC DISEASE delivers precisely what you expect when you look at it. Seventeen blasts of off the rails sample laden hardcore featuring tracks like "Full Of Nothing" and "Raise The Old Pain." Shit is rough, forceful and honest. A little sloppy sometimes (a lot sloppy other times) and that's exactly what you want. Even when it's not what you want...you might just find it's what you need. 

 HARD-RAW RAMGAGE: DIS-COGRAPHY 2004-2011

THE RESIDENTS

 

I had a RESIDENTS record when I was in high school - bought it because the eyeballs looked cool and never truly understood what I owned even though I rarely listened to it (probably because I didn't understand it). Now I wonder how that record (and a few others I copped when I was a pimply small town adolescent) made it into a shop in Ponca City, Oklahoma but....that's a discussion best filed alongside all of the other unsolvable mysteries in my life like "Why can't the richest nation-state in history feed and house its citizens?" and "Was my father actually murdered?" As the title suggests, this recording from 1986 celebrates the thirteenth year of THE RESIDENTS, which means they were well established outsiders long before they creeped onto my paltry record shelf a few years later....and it also means that THE RESIDENTS were next level freaks, making music that wasn't supposed to make sense to a kid like me in that place and time. I wasn't supposed to understand it - I was supposed to be confused and.....curious. Thankfully, I still am. Both.

13th ANNIVERSARY SHOW

ZIPPER

 

Deranged USHC of the most primal variety. "Labels" into "Sheep" might be the best example - VOID level unhinged. This ZIPPER shit just sounds ugly and a little ugly is exactly what I need to make it through the day. 

TOUR TAPE XXIII