ASPS

 

Sometimes it takes less than ten minutes to make you reconsider. ASPS is the solo embodiment of Andrea Blake (CHROME DOME, VACUUM) and their sole release is a dose of gloriously dark, minimal(ist) Australian synth that will remind the careful listener of WAX IDOLS and TJO. The causal listener will experience dark and deliberate sonic beauty...and isn't that enough?

ASPS

AUSTRALIAN RADIO

I love listening to these tapes. People used to record the radio because they wanted to. Because they thought the might hear something that they wouldn't be able to hear again. Some of them were surely documenting and others just wanted something to listen to later (like Tivo...which already makes me sound an ancient human), but some people recorded these things because they were obsessed, and this is how we found things then. I recorded KMOD's distant static-laden Sunday broadcast of album sides in the '80s because how else was I going to hear Perfect Strangers? Just like I devoured Evergreen college radio broadcasts that Eric Hill's brother passed to him and Eric dubbed for me - because there was no internet and we wanted to hear everything that we could. So anyway, here's a Melbourne broadcast from December 29th 1984. Loads of the sounds on this tape was new to me....so it still works, you know? Don't ever stop consuming sound. 

"AUSTRALIAN RADIO"

A.D. SKINNER

 

Somehow the picture of the monkey smoking the comically oversized cigarette kinda sums up the sound here - just some Aussie mutants bashing out six minutes of not giving a fuck and going hard. The title track is the closer and that guitar intro is like what one of those chef's kiss emojis would sound like if it could talk, but by the time you hear that you'll already be head bopping and bedroom moshing. "Stink" is like "Rise Above" if RADIOACTIVITY had written it (and honestly "Dogabone" seems to lift another part of "Ride Above" and if this was intentional then A.D. SKINNER are even bigger geniuses than I thought). "Beggar's Pride" is a perfectly filthy stomp...every song here makes an individual statement when you isolate them, but it's the whole damn thing that sounds like the monkey puffing on that cancer stick. Aussie punk are brilliant. 

DICKSWEAT

SHIT FETISH

 

I waxed on about the difficulties of describing SHIT FETISH when I dropped off their first demo a few months back. Number Two is easier to get your ears around though...until it isn't. A few tracks of deeply damaged hardcore punk with FLIPPER by way of early '00s DIY punk energy. "1989" opens with starts and stops and tweaked guitars and it's almost like EDDY CURRENT mingling with STRAIGHTJACKET NATION (to keep the referenced country-specific). And then....well, and then SHIT FETISH starts to deliver. A raw and punishing hardcore dirge, and mid tempo meat swerve, a piece called "Slakto" that almost hits like some '60 fuzz rock until it takes a turn and I don't even know what kind of freedom I'm listening to anymore. There's just one cut left, and SHIT FETISH saved the.....best? for last with "Nasty Boy." The recording itself has gotten progressively weirder by this point in the tape, and the guitars are something entirely foreign and unrecognizable which is perfect because this is where the FLIPPER really starts to come out. And then comes the electronics and it all just falls the fuck apart and I'm just sitting here looking at my cat. Goes without saying that this middle aged Sepo is really looking forward to Demo III to plop. 

DEMO II

WARCYCLE // ZUDAS KRUST

 

Total fucking bulldozer annihilation in the form of nine relentless bursts of chaos from Indonesia and Australia. Perth's WARCYCLE start with an intro that harkens AXEWIELD and then unleash crasher crust hell on alls mortals foolish enough to stand in their way. For their part, Jakarta's ZUDAS KRUST offer four sinister grinders captured on a recording that demands repeat listens. The bass tone is formidable and damaged and the guitars are either *just* out of tune or these punks are avant-crust geniuses...I'm comfortable assuming they are both, of course. "Ini Hidup Apa" is a one riff exercise in patience and makes me want to re-listen to the rest of the recording with more focus (and volume). So that's what I'm going to do now...

WARCYCLE // ZUDAS KRUST

SHIT FETISH

 

A few months ago I got a message from a stranger asking if I wanted some tapes. Listen closely, punks: YES. Like - even if I don't want them, I need to have them  so I can determine whether or not I want them, you understand? So I responded to this stranger in the affirmative, and kinda forgot about it because.....well, punks is flakes, you know? Then my lady (of the night) friend sent me a message and said she had received a package from Australia with my name on it...so I asked her to open it. Punks, try explaining SHIT FETISH to your girlfriend. Never mind me trying to explain SHIT FETISH to you (dear reader) because that would take more words than I can muster at the moment, but think about explaining SHIT FETISH to someone who doesn't fuck with noise punk at all. So yeah, that was an entertaining conversation. There was another SHIT FETISH tape in that package.....so I guess I'll talk about the band when I post that one (until then, crank "Undergarmet" and "Food Fight" because this is perfect punk)....maybe we can also talk about how scrawling your song titles on the inside of the j-card with a magic fukkn marker so it bleeds through and wrecks the cover art. No? Fine...I'll talk about that somewhere else. 

SHIT FETISH - DEMO TAPE

•••

Last show of the (short) SUBHUMANS tour is tonight in San Pedro. They're playing with NOFX, supposedly the last NOFX show ever. I'm writing these words in September as I'm preparing to head out and I am realizing that I have never seen NOFX - which I am totally fine with. The question is: will I watch them when I have the chance? I guess we will find out. 

WARTHREAT

 

This is Monday. This is the most isolated place on earth (well...kinda, but also totally yes). This is Perth. This is birth (day) madness. This is raw, pummeling brutality. This is buzzsaw guitars. This is sonic pain. This is excruciating....this is also perfect. This is exactly what I need. This is WARTHREAT. This is complete. I am complete. 

WARTHREAT

LAST QUOKKA

 

Goddamn, these Aussies are just straight fukkn fire. It's as if the Birdmen themselves crash landed in a pile of early '00s punk infused indie - I'm talking NEW RACE by way of STROKES or FRANZ FERDINAND reimagining HITMEN here, and Perth's LAST QUOKKA are flawlessly on point for all of it. Jam "My Girl" into "Piggy" and know that you've found it...and you can find a lot more here. 

RED DIRT

...and there were grass stains on my jeans...

DANIEL CRAIG

 

For a recording (or a manipulation of a recording) to sounds like an event is a special thing. A Past Yet To Come is an event, a journey, and....experience? You aren't watching a nonexistent film while these sounds play....you are the star. You are the only character. DANIEL CRAIG creates a sonic environment with meticulously manipulated sound/s and I'm left wondering whether they were created or conjured. The most subtle and deconstructed techno undertones and/or interludes break up atmospheric events. These aren't songs, they aren't movements. These are more than moments - DANIEL CRAIG creates something that just is. Perhaps more than any other release I've shared here, 2020's A Past Yet To Come feels like an entity...it feels like the past is now. 

A PAST YET TO COME

SICK SAD WORLD

 

I could make comparisons (it's tempting) but they are too easy (and too obvious) so I'm just gonna revel in how intent (intense) and urgent this Melbourne trio sound more than a decade after they came and went. The epitome of punk realized by three femme maniacs who deliver maximum intensity even (pr especially?) on the slow plodding numbers like "Cane Toads" and "Rocks In My Fists" before unleashing unbridled ramshackle mania on basically every other track on the tape. "Period Pain" and "Blood Duster Suxxx" are the highlights, but everything here is delivered in ultimate lo-fi glory...they way it should be. This recording and a live set might be all we ever get, so I suggest taking the time to really let this shit sink in. 

WE MEAN WELL

VARIOUS DEATHS

 

Disorienting noise. More noise. Six pieces of aural mania from the fine folks at Audible Mastication to grind your earholes to a pulp. GREENLING and GNAWING TEETH have visited these pages previously, and SHRIKE appeared on the Grunge To All comp I shared last summer - these three are joined by ARMENIA (Ecuador), WHITE UNDERWEAR (Australia) and 886VG (Chile). Clocking in at 90 minutes, Various Deaths is a commitment to be sure (unless you foolishly decide to try to make this background music) but full immersion is highly recommended as the line between the two 'tations' (rehabili- and debili-) blurs to the point of meaninglessness. Noise as meditation...I knew there was a third. 

VARIOUS DEATHS

OTHER OZ/NZ HORDES

Ripped a real banger set from Sydney's HITMEN a while back (check Escape Is Terminal for that magic) and someone was nice enough to cram a few bonus cuts at the end so....here you go. HENCHMEN, MUSHROOM PLANET and a gloriously brooding number from MELTING SKYSCRAPERS - it's a short little mix, but damn it's a good one. Thank you...and you're welcome too. 

OTHER OZ/NZ HORDES

X-RAY SPEX

The target audience here might be small, but hats off to the tape makers and traders from past punk generations for putting all of this shit in our hands today. I'f you're still reading after noting X-RAY SPEX on the title bar then just skip my drivel and go right to the download link, because you clearly know what you want and it's right fucking here. A live version of "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!" with several tracks from Germ Free Adolescents (taken straight from the record), plus nine cuts from a 1977 demo recording and four from a Peel Session the same year. And then, because I love you (and someone who came before all of us loves you too) you get three tracks from THE SAINTS and goddamn it's good to hear "Demolition Girl" again because that song just rules. It's been too long. You're welcome, punk.

GERM FREE + DEMO + PEEL + SAINTS

LAND AND LANGUAGE

 

Absolutely devastating collection of underground and experimental hip hop from indigenous artists based in all corners of the globe. Instead of dissecting tracks, I'll give you a (partial) list: NUUK POSSE (Greenland), AMOC (Sámpi), SERHADO (Kurdish rapper based in Stockholm), UPPER HUTT POSSE (Aotearoa, NZ), TJIMBA AND THE YUNG WARRIORS (Australia), HATHUR ZOO (Buryatia), ROLLIN 'N LIL SPADE (Navajo Nation), BANAISSA (Moroccan based in Germany), X PLASTAZ (Arusha, Masaai), LO CUT A SLEIFAR (Wales), M.A.K. (Basque Country)...and that's just the first side. The sounds are all over the place (literally and figuratively) and the delivery is overwhelmingly intense. You can feel the intensity and the isolation in every track, and that is exactly what makes this compilation so essential. The flip features artists from Cherokee Nation, Mongolia, Nairobi, Tajikistan, Chile, Bolivia, Mauritania, Norway, Palestine.....in case you need to be convinced. All praise to the folks who put this compilation together. 

LAND AND LANGUAGE

SIMFUCKERS

This shit is just fukkn naaaaaasty. Wild and chaotic new century noise punk from the mean streets of Adelaide. I'm not sure what you were expecting, but this SIMFUCKERS outfit is (was?) an absolute disgrace. In other words: You need these sounds in your ear holes. 

SIMFUCKERS

ALL IN DEEP SHIT

 

Western Australia breeds weird ones, y'all. Always has. Something about the isolation, perhaps? You can feel that isolation on 2001's HIV Positive Youth, manifested as riffs and raw, loose blurrcore riffs.  Fuck the scene? Nah...fuck everything. 

HIV POSITIVE YOUTH

DEATHMOB

 

Honestly, it's kinda silly. Four bursts of rote early DISCHARGE worship offered in ear shredding simplicity. It sounds like Uranium Genocide could have been conceived, written and recorded in one lazy afternoon (and perhaps it was)...but as that afternoon in 2012 faded into memory as 'just another day,' the world was left with four short minutes of noise. So yeah, maybe it's a little silly, and maybe that's just fine. Because it's been a decade, and we're still listening. 

URANIUM GENOCIDE

STEPHEN McDONNELL

 

Created specifically to be used in conjunction with a book titled THE WAY OF THE SHAMAN: A Guide To Power And Healing, 1986's Didjeridu For The Shamanic Journey is every bit as much of a trip as you hope it might be. The sounds themselves aren't decidedly psychedelic but the effect they have will turn your brain inside your head, and any tape with a printed advisory to not operate heavy machinery while listening.....well that's a tape that I'm going to want to fuck with. 

DIDJERIDU FOR THE SHAMANIC JOURNEY

D.I.Y. CONSPIRACY VOL. 1

The DIY Conspiracy folks spent the year of Covid cranking out some serious mix tape heat, and I was happy to get the first six installments in one hefty batch. Hardcore, crust, DBeat, punk, doom from Bulgaria, Brasil, Italy, Austria, Chile, Greece, Russia, Australia, Singapore, Portugal...this is the kind of conspiracy I can get behind. 

 

DIY CONSPIRACY VOL.1

Defend DIY Punk indeed - especially from thieves and charlatans. 

But that's for a different post. 

WAR TRAUMA

 

Power, violence and filth from Australia's WAR TRAUMA. Six songs in five minutes - all raw, neanderthal stomps that will have your knuckles dragging that ground and punching holes in walls. Likely both. This one is extremely lo-fi and everything is pegged, so it'll probably take until the end of the first listen to really let the aural experience settle in....GODSTOMPER fans rejoice. 

WAR TRAUMA