Category: post punk

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Introducing the Industrial Post-Punk Sounds of Springfield, MO’s Kudzu

Publicly citing Tears for Fears, The Cure, Spectrum, Guided by Voices, Sympathy Nervous and This Heat as major influences, the Springfield, MO-based synth wave/synth punk duo Kudzu, comprised of Seth Goodwin (vocals, synths, drum programming) and Mark Gillenwaters (vocals, guitar) will be releasing their forthcoming full-length album Defeated on March 2, 2018 through Push & Pull Records. And reportedly, the album’s 9 songs come from several layers of disenchantment and frustration — first with their local punk and DIY scenes, which has resulted in a general dissociation from them and second, the stark reality of life in the Ozarks. As the band’s Mark Gillenwaters explains in press notes “I feel like there is a type of alienation you can harbor in a place like this that lends itself to bleak music. I like to treat lyrics as more emotional than literal, so some lyrics might not make sense but still convey the emotion I’m trying to present.” 

“Some Cops,” the latest single off the band’s forthcoming album finds the duo drawing from the likes of Ministry, PIL and early Nine Inch Nails as it features layers of buzzing, analog synths, slashing and buzzing power chords, propulsive yet forceful drum programming and an anthemic hook — and while clearly being mosh pit friendly, the song bristles and snarls with a pent up frustration at its core. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms
Currently comprised of founding trio Brandon Pierce, a founding member of prog rock act Ancestors, who has had stints with Buried at Sea, Deth Crux, Night Horse and Portland,OR’s Soft Kill; Brandon’s wife Rachael Pierce, an accomplished vocalist, who spent years demoing pop songs for major labels; and Cameron Carlin, who also is a member of Black Mare, the Los Angeles, CA-based post punk trio GLAARE initially formed back in 2012 and since their formation, the band has received attention for featuring some of Southern California’s most accomplished musicians, as well as for a sound that possesses elements of darkwave, dream pop and goth-rock while revealing a meticulous songwriting approach through the release of 2014’s The Universe Is Machine, which featured former member Jason Watkins (keys), a 2015 split 7 inch with electronic duo Intimachine and a self-titled cassette EP last year.
To Deaf and Day, the up-and-coming Los Angeles-based post-punk trio’s full-length debut was released earlier this year through Dune Altar/Funeral Party Records, and from the album’s latest single “Desiree,” the members of GLAARE will further cement their growing local and regional reputation for a sound that’s deeply indebted to 4AD Records heyday, The Cure, Sixousie and the Banshees and others but with a subtly modern sheen.
Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Throughout the bulk of this site’s history, I’ve written quite a bit about the Brooklyn-based JOVM post-punk mainstays NØMADS. And as you’d recall, the act which is primarily comprised of Nathan Lithow  (vocals, synths, bass) and Garth Macaleavey (drums) spent the better part of last year writing and recording the material that would eventually comprise PHØBIAC, a concept album in which each song focuses on a different phobia, approached in an abstract, almost clinical fashion. Naturally, the material captures and evokes the innermost thoughts and anxieties of someone in the grips of a deeply crippling fear; but at its core, is a cautionary message for our heightened and uncertain times — that whenever we succumb to the irrationality of our fears, chaos and self-destruction will be the result.

Throughout the course of 2017, the Brooklyn-based JOVM mainstays have released a new single from the album every month, adding the band to a growing list of artists, who have experimented with how an album is packaged, arranged, marketed, publicized and sold in the blogosphere age. Interestingly enough, during the summer, the duo announced that they’d be splitting the full-length album into two separate EPs — the organic, punk rock-like PHØBIAC Part 1, which features Lithow collaborating with his bandmate Macaleavy and the synth-driven, prog rock-like PHØBIAC Part 2, which features Lithow collaborating with acclaimed drummer Brian Wolf, who has worked with David Byrne, St. Vincent and the legendary Dap Kings.

“Xenophøbia,” the jagged and tense, Entertainment!-era Gang of Four/Pink Flag-era Wire-like new single from NØMADS focuses on an all-too familiar fear that has dominated the news and the attention of the world — xenophobia, the fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners, as well as anything that is considered strange or foreign. Featuring the band’s original duo of Lithow and Macaleavy, the single’s lyrical perspective is that of an aging, tyrannical dictator, pounding his fists behind a podium and riling the fears and hatreds of a fervent, frothing mob while being a meditation on what it means to be an outsider — whether racially, religiously or culturally — in the internet age. But along with that, the song points at the chilling and increasingly fascistic turn our culture and government have taken since Trump has taken office, suggesting that we should be fearful of what could happen next and resist with every fiber of our beings.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

2017 has been a breakthrough year for the Reykjavik, Iceland-based indie rock/post-punk trio  Fufanu.. Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of this past year, you’d recall that the band, currently comprised of founding members Kaktus Einarsson (vocals, guitar), whose father Einar was a member of The Sugarcaubes and Guðlaugur “Gulli” Einarsson (guitar, programming) (no relation, by the way) along with newest member, Erling Bang (drums) can trace their origins to when the band’s founding duo met while at school. And according to the band’s founding duo, Katkus had glanced at Gulli’s iTunes and noticed that they had listened to a lot of the same techno and electronic music. After quickly bonding over mutual interests, the duo went into a studio and began writing and recording electronic music under the name Captain Fufanu. Interestingly, within a month of their formation, Kaktus and Gulli had started playing shows in and around their hometown.

Building upon a rapidly growing profile, the duo went into the studio to record what would be their full-length debut as Captain Fufanu; but in a strange twist of fate, the studio where Kaktus and Gulli had recorded the album was burgled. Naturally, everyone involved in the process presumed the album was lost. While many bands would be devastated by losing their life’s work in such a shitty fashion, Kaktus and Gulli put a positive spin on the ordeal, viewing it as an opportunity to reinvent themselves and their sound, as they were developing a growing technical and musical prowess. Coincidentally, Kaktus Einarsson had been spending time in London working on Damon Albarn’s Everyday Robots and touring with the late and legendary Bobby Womack when he began writing lyrics. Simultaneously, Gulli had started to craft a completely revised sound, which according to Kaktus managed to convey exactly what he had been thinking and feeling at the time. The result was the duo pairing Kaktus’ brooding and ironically detached vocals with an arrangement that featured guitar, bass, drums, synths and other electronics. Armed with a new sound, the duo renamed the project Fufanu.

Fufanu’s first live set as Fufanu, with their new sound and material was at 2014’s Iceland Airwaves and they quickly became one of the most talked about bands of the entire festival. Right after the festival, they went into the studio to record their full-length debut, A Few More Days To Go, which was released to applause both nationally and internationally; in fact, with an even bigger profile, Fufanu toured with The Vaccines and others, and played some of Northern Europe’s and Scandinavia’s largest festivals, including the aforementioned Iceland Airwaves, JaJaJa Festival and others.

Released earlier this year, the band’s sophomore album Sports finds the band going through some significant changes — Kaktus and Gulli recruited Erling “Elli” Bang (drums) to further flesh their sound out, with the newly constituted trio refining their material’s sound and thematic concerns, represented through album title track  “Sports,” which retains the synth-driven sound of their debut while nodding at Can, Neu!  Joy Division and early ’80s Peter Gabriel,  the slow-burning and moody  “Liability” and “White Pebbles.”  However, the highly buzzed about Icelandic trio begin the holiday season and close out the year, with “Top Of The Queens,” a track that was recorded during the Sports sessions and didn’t make the cut.

Of course, what makes an the release of a previously unreleased album track intriguing is the fact that they frequently give the listener — if they’re familiar with the album in question — some insight into the complex editorial decisions that comprise the making of an album. In some cases, you can immediately tell why a particular song wasn’t included — it just didn’t fit the tone and vibe of the album. In other cases, it’s not apparent. Sometimes, it’s a matter of a song floating around for a while and the band just is tired of the song or it’s an issue of not having a whole lot of time and something has to get cut — or a variety of other issues. Interestingly enough, “Top Of The Queens” manages to continue in a similar, anthemic hook-laden, synth-based rock vibe but it has a rougher, punk rock band in a dive bar edge to it.

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Over the past 13-15 months or so, JOVM has managed to catch the up-and-coming Brooklyn-based post punk/psych pop act Monograms on a couple of bills around town. And as you may recall, the band initially began as the solo recording project of its founding member Ian Joseph; however, since expanding into a full-fledged band, Monograms has received a growing profile, as they’ve opened for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, GøGGS (a side project featuring Ty Segall and members of JOVM mainstay Ex-Cult) Ezra Furman, Sunflower Bean, APTBS‘ Dion Lunadon, Quilt, Dreamers, Spires and others.

The band’s latest single “Sleep Cycle” finds the band experimenting and expanding upon their sound, with the single briefly nodding at 90s grunge rock and Gang of Four-like post punk as they pair fuzzy power chords with a propulsive and angular bass chords, forceful drumming and an anthemic hook, creating an ambitious and arena rock friendly song that manages to retain a sweaty, mosh pit worthiness.

Monograms has an upcoming show on Monday night at Brooklyn’s newest venue Elsewhere with Journalism and Obliques.

Check out the Facebook event page for more info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1450449005069867/

 

 

 

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

Last month, I wrote about the up-and-coming Tel Aviv, Israel-based indie rock quartet Document, and as you may recall, the band, which is comprised of Nir Ben Jacob (vocals, guitar), Yanniv Brenner (Guitar), Amit David (Bass) and Amir Reich (Drums) can trace their origins to 2008. Once Jacob and finished college, he moved back to Tel Aviv and began hanging out with his cousin and a couple of his friends. And as bored 20-somethings, who were the only ones among their peers listening to Wire, The Fall, Fugazi, Dinosaur, Jr. and others, they decided to start a band and to write and play music together. In their native Israel, the indie rock quartet have developed a reputation for writing material that focuses on our obsessions with technology and our increasing disconnection with others, dealing with soulless bureaucracy and corruption, the seemingly endless banality of modern life, and the constant oscillating anxiety, outrage, hope and joy that many of us feel on a regular basis.

“Hustle” off the band’s soon-to-be released album The Void Repeats focuses on the sort of digital addiction that removes you from connecting with others or from being in that particular moment; where a screen is an extension of one’s self and one’s life. Some time ago, I was sitting in a Center City, Philadelphia bar, chatting with a couple of very lovely locals but at some point the conversation stopped as they began to focus on Snapchatting into the internet void. As the band’s Nir Ben Jacob said of the song at the time, “Phones are the roots that allow us to be connected to everything else. We‘ve rooted ourselves in our modernity. Our identities can change online. We project what we want others to see. The screen has become a mirror. The phone takes away the ability to be intimate, and you are left alone with a distortion of reality. There’s the addiction of immediate gratification, the online approvals are ‘pseudo-pleasure’. This has all led to pointless compulsive behavior.”  Sonically speaking, the song is a scuzzy and angular post-punk single that’s clearly influenced by the likes of Wire and Gang of Four but it bristles with an ironic and incredibly post modern awareness while possessing incredibly tight, infectious hooks and a cool, self-assuredness beyond their relative youth.
The up-and-coming Israeli band’s latest and last single “Red Tape” as the band’s Jacob explains “refers to dealing with bureaucracy — specifically government agencies that are meant to serve the people, when in fact, they have made things so extremely complicated that you are lost and get screwed over if you’re not careful.” Sonically, while the song finds the band drawing from the hook-laden anthemic, garage rock and guitar rock of Pavement and others; but underneath the surface the song bristles with the bitter frustration of recognizing that you’re getting fucked over, and that no one who’s supposed to help you will help.

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Melbourne Australia-based JOVM Mainstays Gold Class Return with an Anthemic Post Punk Ode to Resistance

Over the past couple of years, I’ve written a handful of posts about JOVM’s newest mainstay act, Melbourne, Australia-based post-punk band Gold Class, an act comprised of  collection of work friends, drinking buddies and classmates in a creative writing course featuring  Evan James Purdey (guitar), Jon Shub (bass), Adam Curley (vocals), and Logan Gibson (drums). The Australian quartet formed back in 2014 and they quickly developed a reputation for lean and explosive live sets, which eventually culminated in their debut effort, It’s You — and with It’s You, the members of Gold Class wrote and recorded an album that paired angular and wiry post-punk with material that lyrically focused on issues of personal politics, sexuality and identity, with an unflinching frankness. Critically, the album was a massive success in Australia, with the Aussie quartet being shortlisted for the Australian Music Prize and receiving an Age Award nomination. 
With a rapidly growing national and international profile, the members of Gold Class found themselves playing a series of sold out shows across their homeland, and London, as well as sets at some of the world’s biggest festivals, including Golden Plains, Splendour in the Grass, London Calling, and Primavera Sound. Building upon that growing profile, Drum, the highly-anticipated follow up to It’s You is slated for release next Friday through Felte Records, and as the band’s Adam Curley explains in an artist statement about the new album,“The week we started to write Drum, my relationship ended and I was left alone in a draughty [sic] old house, which belonged to a friend of a friend. In the house, I sat around with my notebook, the quiet hours cut with news from friends and the TV; the suicides of musicians and writers I’d known and queer kids I hadn’t; the systematic abuse of vulnerable people, the constant mockery of anyone on the outs. 

I knew what the purpose of the album would be when I wrote the repeated line in ‘Get Yours:’ ‘There’s none left here and all I need.’ I wanted it to be a record of defiance, a resistance to the idea of scrambling for a place at a table that wasn’t set for you. A sort of a love letter to anyone who not only can’t meet the standard but doesn’t want to. I wanted it to be a record of rage and ecstasy and endless nights and sex and dumb fun and ventures in solidarity. Not just an album of urgency and longing, but one of abandon and a reclaiming of a self beyond boundaries.

But I couldn’t avoid what was immediately happening in my life, either, that the end of my relationship had uncovered a lot of the feelings of isolation I experienced growing up. And so it turned out that the album is also personal, and I think is in conversation with queer histories of silence and evasion and transgression, which I was revisiting through the writing of James Baldwin and Cocteau. Childhood imagery kept creeping into the lyrics. Maybe I was trying to come to some peace with the past and to stand up and find some agency in the present. I suppose it was the most defiant thing I could think to do: not to write as some act of catharsis but in an attempt simply to document and claim my existence; that I am here.”

Now, while the album is fueled by the personal experiences, thoughts and emotions of the band’s primary lyricist, the album, which was co-produced by  
The Drones‘ Garther Liddiard reportedly finds the band expanding upon both their sound, attempting to capture distinctly different moods and tones from its predecessor; in fact on album single “Twist In The Dark,” the band manages to evoke a complicated and somewhat contradictory array of emotions — desperate and fervent longing, the uncertainty of a relationship in which you can’t tell what your motivations are for the relationship nor can you figure out what that other person truly feels or their motivations. And the result is a tense push and pull between desire and repugnance that’s at the heart of the most dysfunctional and confusing relationships. But underneath, there’s a wistfulness towards the ridiculous, burning passions and desires of one’s youth when things seemed more simplistic and much more black and white, yes and no. 

“Get Yours,” Drum’s latest single will further cement the Aussie post-punk quartet’s reputation for crafting tense and wiry post-punk based around its lyricists personal experiences and his own messy, complicated, very adult life and while the band plays with a passionate and fiery self-assuredness, the material is rooted within an urgent and uncompromising desire to live in accordance to one’s own dictates, desires and pleasures and to resist, simply by saying “I’m here and you may hate me, but I ain’t going anywhere. My life fucking matters.” 

Directed by Defero Productions, the recently released video for “Get Yours” consists of slickly edited live footage of  the band performing a sweaty and furious set in a dark little club as it always should be, and the video captures the explosion of lights, the fervent passion of the band playing their songs in front of people, who truly get their music. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The B52s Cindy Wilson Returns with Another Sleek and Modern Synth Wave Track

Since their formation back in 1977, the Athens, GA-based  The B-52s, their founding (and surviving members) Fred Schneider (vocals), Kate Pierson (vocals, keys), Cindy Wilson (vocals) and Keith Strickland (drums, rhythm guitar) have developed a reputation for an approach that draws from 60s garage rock, New Wave, post-punk and dance music, complete with the guy vs. gal, call and response vocals. Much ink has been spilled on them, so it won’t be very necessary to delve deeply into biographical detail; however, over the past few years, Cindy Wilson has embarked on a solo recording career that has managed to be an almost complete departure from her primary gig’s imitable and influential sound; in fact, earlier this year, I wrote about “Ballistic” off her Supernatural EP a single, which revealed that as a solo artist, her sound nodded at much more contemporary sources — i.e., the anthemic and trippy electro pop of Gary Numan, Tame Impala, Air and punk pop, complete with pulsating synths.

Much like the Supernatural EP, Wilson’s forthcoming full-length, solo debut Change was produced and engineered by PacificUV’s and Dream Boat‘s Sun Lyons, and continues her collaboration with some of Athens’ finest and most acclaimed, contemporary, young musicians including Easter Island‘s and Monahan’s Ryan Monahan, Ola Moon‘s and PacificUV’s Lemuel Hayes, and powerkompany’s Marie Davon. Change’s first single “Mystic” continues on a similar vibe as “Ballistic,” as the song is an icy retro-futuristic, dance floor-friendly blast of synth rock/New Wave that features Wilson crooning and cooing seductively, rather than her world-renowned belting and shouting from the mountains. And in some way, the material finds the New Wave/post-punk legend at her most mischievous and adventurous, as she pushes her sound into a new territory — while being a sincere and earnest exploration of contemporary sound and songwriting. 

As Wilson explained to the folks at Stereogum, “‘Mystic’ was actually one of the last tracks recorded for the LP. It quickly became one of the band’s favorites and maintains its energy on the road. Lyrically, it’s about our personalities — how we’re all multi-dimensional in ways that we will never understand. We all have a hidden mystic quality if we can learn and trust to tap into that power. This song is about how we’re all trying to define ourselves and make sense of ourselves, yet there is an ineffable, indescribable quality to consciousness.” 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Hymns To The Night, the attention-grabbing full-length debut from post-punk duo Lea Porcelain was written and recorded over a two year period in Berlin, Germany‘s famed Funkhaus, a broadcast house created under Soviet supervision that now houses one of the world’s biggest recording studios. Interestingly enough, while the duo describes their sound as being “atmospheric, cinematic and melancholic,” the material on their debut reportedly finds the band subtly bending and playing with genre boundaries; however, album single “Warsaw Street” manages to be a decidedly post-punk single, nodding at Turn On The Bright Lights and Antics-era Interpol.

Recently, the acclaimed British DJ, producer and owner of Hotflush Recordings Paul Rose, best known as Scuba remixed the song adding thumping beats, clave and layers of undulating synths and a dance floor-friendly motorik-like groove and although he retains some of the original’s atmospheric vibe, the remix manages to focus primarily on mood and groove, creating an altogether new song with a completely different feel.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Certainly, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past year of its seven year history, you’ve come across a nubmer of posts featuring Brooklyn-based post-punk duo and JOVM mainstays NØMADS. Comprised of Nathan Lithow  (vocals, bass) and Garth Macaleavey (drums), the duo have a rather accomplished history both separately and together, and with the release of their 2014 full-length debut, the duo received attention across the blogosphere for a sound that drew and/or nodded at Nirvana, Fugazi and Girls Against Boys while also nodding at Zack de la Rocha’s post-Rage Against the Machine project, One Day As A Lion  and Japandroids.

After a year-long hiatus from touring and writing, the Brooklyn-based duo spent the better part of 2016 writing and recording the material that would eventually comprise their sophomore album PHØBIAC, a concept album in which each song focuses on a different phobia, approached in an abstract, almost clinical fashion, while capturing the innermost thoughts, anxieties and fears of someone in the grips of their own deepest fear; but at the core, is a cautionary message for our heightened and uncertain times — that whenever we succumb to the irrationality of our fears, chaos and self-destruction will be the end result. Throughout the course of the year, the duo have released a new single off the album every month with the complete, full album being slated for a 2018 release.

Last month’s single “Chronometrophøbia” was a slow-burning and moody instrumental composition focused on the fear of clocks, watches and passing time in which buzzing and distorted bass chords evoked the grinding mechanisms of gears inside of a clock and the metronomic-like drumming evoked the clicking of watch hands moving around the clock’s face as it moves second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour. And throughout the composition there’s a creeping and unsettled anxiety of being aware of time’s relentless march forward — and being constantly reminded of the fact that time marches forward with or without you. As the band’s Nathan Lithow explained in press notes “The fear of clocks is a very compelling to me as a soundscape metaphor. As a physical object, a clock not only “tells” time, but also represents the passing of time, and the concrete idea of the present tense. Chronometrophobia is tangentially connected to Chronophobia, the fear of time or of time’s passing, but as a compositional theme I think the clicks/ticks/tocks/beeps and bells provide a bit of a textual context to the song as a whole.”
PHØBIAC‘s latest single “Dementophøbia” focuses on the most common fear any one of us would have — the fear that your your tenuous grip on reality and sanity may slowly be slipping. And when there are so many things both big and small in our daily lives that have seemingly gone insane, it would be far more likelier to start asking yourself “is it me — or is it everyone around me?'” And as a result, the song may be the most tense and anxious track they’ve released to date, as the song’s narrator seems to recognize that at some point there’s only so much anyone can take before they crack; the problem is that we don’t know what will cause it.