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1. Experimental, kitchen-produced hybrid of folk, musique concrète and psychedelia by ODETTA HARTMAN.

She raised by pioneering parents on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, NYC, Odetta’s milieu was a “colorful culture of artistry,” that included early exposure to community activism, renegade film screenings, poetry readings and trips to CBGB’s. Inchoate punk and hip hop were aural wallpaper, as were the 45s spinning in the household jukebox featuring her dad’s extensive collection of soul and afrobeat records, as well as her Appalachian mother’s classic country selections. A classically trained violinist with a penchant for back-porch banjo, Odetta combines these variegated sounds of her childhood with her personal passion for folk music and the musicological legacy of Alan Lomax. But she never takes herself too seriously and always tries to have fun, so she went to the kitchen.

“Many of the beats on the album were recorded in the kitchen: the snare sound is actually a running faucet, or if you hear these glockenspiel bells that’s actually a set of kitchen bowls. Other percussive elements include scissors, a pepper grinder and keys on the radiator.” Anyway she loves mistakes in songwriting or recording, because they so often lead to something greater. I do not know how many songs got its final form by mistakes on this album, just know that is weird and wonderful. Her second album OLD ROCKHOUNDS NEVER DIE is slated for release on NORTHERN SPY RECORDS and MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES on August 10, 2018.

2. THE DUE DILIGENCE is a free form band of songwriter Isaac Gillespie and his friends. The new alum LIFE IS HARD is the final piece of a trilogy. It was started with the country-soul album „I Will Wreck Your Life” in 2011. It was the encapsulation of the years Gillespie spent in the antifolk scene. The second part was the frenetic Velvet Underground-infused sarcasm of 2014’s Are You Down. It’s the wild night on the town, but it’s also the morning after. A recognition of the difficulty of life.

LIFE IS HARD is largely inspired by songwriter Gillespie’s grandmother’s passing, and her perseverance through the many challenges of being a single mother and a child of immigrants in the 1950s. LIFE IS HARD is both the death album and the pop album. It provides a trash-gospel meditation on the tug of war between the lusts that drive us and the deaths to which we’re driven. It was inspired by the psychedelic soul of Sly & the Family Stone and the „plaintive mythologizing” of Grateful Dead. It will be released in June on PAPER GARDEN RECORDS (US).

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3. Atlanta’s SUBSONICS are a gutter-glam, minimal rock’n’roll trio. FLESH COLORED PAINT is their 8th album. Like all their previous works, this is a distilled hodgepodge of decades of popular culture and classic literature culminating in a collection of short and groovy shambolar: Chuck Berry, Albert Camus, AM radio rock jocks, Bo Diddley, Golden Age TV, surrealism, Mad Magazine, kung-fu flicks, Herman Melville, Little Richard, self-negating philosophy, David Johansen, The Bible, Dee Dee Ramone, Lee Van Cleef, Cornell Woolrich, advertising jingles, Dada, Carole King, Bugs Bunny, and Casablanca; the poem, not the film. The album was released by SLOVENLY RECORDS.

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4. New Yorker PARQUET COURTS is a punk band. Hard to say anything else. OK, compared to Total Punk Records style punk bands they rather play pop music. Their influences come from Velvet Underground, Ramones and Talking Heads, but I also hear The Fall and even Country Teasers in their music. I remember their first album was a big revelation for me. There the sound was more punk than on the next ones. Fortunately unlike many others they don’t write the same record year by year. And now with the new album WIDE AWAKE we arrived to New Orelans.

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5. Howe Gelb refused to cancel their first Los Angeles live gig when his band Giant Sandworms had broken up days before in Tucson, Arizona. Instead, he headed out anyway with Scott Garber, the newest member who’d only been in the band for about a year. Gelb asked fellow Tucsonan Winston Watson who lived in Los Angeles to jump in as drummer for the live date. And he did it with no rehearsal. The result was so sparked with adrenalin, that the trio set up an impromptu studio session the next day to attempt to capture the sonic thrust on tape. Later they recorded some songs to make it to a full LP with a different drummer in Tucson. The album Valley Of Rain was released in 1985 under the name of GIANT SAND.

But at the time of the recording Gelb was unacquainted with the possibilities of tube amps. So 30 some years later, now that the band had been put to sleep indefinitely, those very first songs had begun creeping into the last Giant Sand tours. It somehow seemed appropriate to give them another shot with the proper amp just to see what they could’ve been. What made the idea more approachable was the availability of both original drummers living back in Tucson. And they recorded the songs again together with the two newest member. And the sound is insane.

The album RETURN TO VALLEY OF THE RAIN on FIRE RECORDS (UK)

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6. After a few months spent abroad in Spain and her infatuation with Brazilian music, Chicago based Vivian McConnell was inspired to create a dreamy new genre she calls “nap-rock” and to assume the moniker of V.V. LIGHTBODY – the name of her piano-playing grandmother. The ocean-like tunes on the album BATHING PEACH combine the vivid lyricism of Joni Mitchell with the jazz-inflected chords of Sam Prekop’s early solo records. Unanchored in a sea of glitching mermaids, V.V. LIGHTBODY is a surreal reflection of McConnell’s experiences and influences that coalesce into an intimate narrative of self-discovery.

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7. After half year that her album with Kurt Vile was released Australian indie rock songstress COURTNEY BARNETT has released her new album TELL ME HOW YOU REALLY FEEL with contribution of Kim and Kelly Deal from Breeders on MILK RECORDS (AUS), MOM+POP MUSIC (US) and MARATHON ARTISTS (UK)

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8. So here is PALBERTA‘s new album ROACH GOIN’ DOWN on WHARF CAT RECORDS (US) soon. The best phrase which best describes the music of these girls is: wap wap wap dabbada ding ding dack dabbada.

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9. THE DREEBS have been making music in New York since 2009. Over the next couple years they would find a home in the Brooklyn noise rock community, while staying true to their specific sound palette. The best if their friend Andrew Savage (Parquet Quarts) tells you about the band and their new album FOREST OF A CREW on RAMP LOCAL RECORDS (US).

First a little catch up for the unacquainted: Every member of The Dreebs has, at some point, been a member of PC Worship (that is if the players in the notorious New York City collective could ever be called members). The Dreebs were first described to me years ago as PC Worship’s weirder side project, which immediately caught my attention because, how could a band be weirder than PC Worship. I’m not going to even attempt to quantify that because it’s utterly impossible. Though over the years, we’ve seen a sort of Dreebian declaration of independence by their increased presence in the New York City DIY and avant-garde scenes. That independence has been loudly articulated in the form of Forest Of A Crew. It’s the sum of eight songs and seven instrumentals. These pieces wash over the listener like vignettes of a fever dream, punctuated with moments of terror and beauty. It exists not in romanticized New York of old where artists could survive in squalor so long as they existed in inexpensive and undesirable locations where no squares fear to tread. Rather, the hellscape of The Dreebs is of a different variety, where even Bushwick is unaffordable and the decision to live as an artist in the city has become a perilous one.

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10. THE COMMON COLD is an English psychedelic rock band whose sound incorporates elements of Krautrock, post-punk, and northern soul. It has been formed by two friends Ajay Saggar and Mark Wareing, the duo had served time in legendary British punk band Dandelion Adventure many years before. Two years ago they took to the stage for the first time together nearly after 30 years to play a set of psych jams. Later they got three drummers, but one time just two play. They got the influence from Kaleidoscope, Neu!, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and The Fall. On their debut album SHUT UP! YO LIBERALS! on ACTION RECORDS features former drummers of Cornershop and The Fall.

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11. SECOND STILL is an LA based post-punk, cold wave wave band. Best describe them the names of the labels which release their music: Manic Depression, Weyrd Son and Sentimental Records. Their new EP EQUALS was released on WEYRD SON RECORDS (Belgium). I was so lucky that i saw them in Budapest not long before. It was a frantic night.

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12. APOSTILLE is the solo electronic project of Night-School Records‘ head Michael Kasparis. His second solo album CHOOSE LIFE will release on 8 June on UPSET THE RHYTHM RECORDS, and it’s the greatest new wave synth-pop music what I heard recently. Minimal and courageous. It’s not a simple thing. Through EBM and acid techno finally it reach to Prodigy.

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13. It’s time for mysterious cinematic pop melancholia with Scottish musician PICTISH TRAIL. He is a svelte, intelligent, adorable balladeer, trapped inside the body of an oversized, oft-bearded folk ogre. Runs Lost Map Records, up on the isle of Eig. It’s one of the Small Isles in the Inner Hebrides with a population around 100. His extraordinary vocals reveal hidden depths and have been accompanied by everything from acoustic guitar to a full-on four piece metal band to throbbing dance beats and samples, and often during the course of the same gig. The album FUTURE ECHOES originally released in 2016 on his label, but now it will be re-released with a bunch of unreleased remixes and live materials in July on FIRE RECORDS (UK)

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14. „Searching for the light in the pouring rain” is the motto of THE GOLDEN DREGS. It’s the project of Benjamin Woods with a musical approach inspired by 70’s Americana and jam bands, The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan’s The Basement Tapes, and the documentary movie about the Mussel Shoals Studio.

The debut album LAFAYETTE is jangly summer-summoning pop for the hours when the sun is disappearing below the sea. What it plays out is a rich representation of small town living; from the churn of the rumour mill to the assortment of intriguing characters that only seem to exist far away from motorways, Itsu chains and the relative anonymity afforded by city living. It was recorded with contributions from some of the town Falmouth’s best musicians – the Cleave brothers (The Red Cords), Samuel Stacpoole (Holiday Ghosts), Jake Wilbourne (The Black Tambourines) and plenty more. And released on ART IS HARD RECORDS. And good to listen to it.

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15. ONYX was the avant-garde electronic duo of American songwriter and instrumentalist Judd Stone, and British vocalist and fashion model Beveur in the early 80s. The only instruments they used are drums /percussion and synthesizers – except for a primitive drum machine track that is used on “Planet X”. All of the instruments are played, and there is no syncing or sequencers used on any of the recordings. The bass tracks are keyboard bass. And what they recorded it is still fresh.

COMPLETE WORKS 1981-83 will release in June on Osaka based Franco-Japanese label MIND RECORDS.

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COUNTRY HARDCORE JAZZ PUNK TECHNO PSYCHEDELIC TRASH BLUES NOISE ROCK AND ROLL INDUSTRIAL METAL GARAGE POP EXPERIMENTAL STUPID MUSIC & more

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1. James Joyce once said that if all of Dublin was destroyed, they ought to be able to rebuild it brick by brick just from reading his novels. WILDER MAKER’s ZION is the first chapter in a musical novel that makes the same claim for Brooklyn, NY.

ZION is a kaleidoscopic snapshot of years hustling for a break in New York City: waking up at 5 am to pour coffee for the brownstone-owning elite, waiting for a drug dealer on a city bench outside a blurry house party, moving catastrophically from apartment to apartment in the garbage scented heat, glimpsing euphoria through the ritual of taking your place among the anonymous crowd at a music festival, having your heart shattered in front of an audience at a bar, drunkenly contemplating bodega window displays, circling ever closer to something that could either be perfection or the drain, depending on the day.

Written by guitarist/saxophonist/singer Gabriel Birnbaum and brought to life with longtime collaborators Katie Von Schleicher, Nick Jost (Baroness), Adam Brisbin (Sam Evian, Jolie Holland) and Sean Mullins.

Its influences run from classic 70’s Dylan to blown out free jazz saxophone, from Dr. John’s swampy psychedelia to Ethiopian sounds picked up from Birnbaum’s many years as a member of Debo Band, with hints of Coltrane’s classic quartet and nods to The Velvet Underground. The album ZION will be released in July on NORTHERN SPY RECORDS (US)

2. Everything what you never wanted to know about retail:

ARNDALES is a sardonic post-punk quartet,
a hidden gem at an English countryside warehouse.
Their long-awaited debut album “SHOPS” recently released.

The album “SHOPS” is coming soon on IN THE RED RECORDINGS.
And there is nothing shiny. Just old fashioned music like the old Fall
with a Negativland song which is replaced to mid-Bedfordshire.

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3. „This record really began when I got my first analog synthesizer and started making wild and odd noises with it. I sat on the couch with it on my lap and headphones on for two weeks and never found the end to the sounds it could make, and I still haven’t, half a year later” – said Polish-American drummer Tym Wojcik about his new album JITTER VISIONS. He recorded it with his band called CUP. It is released now on AAGOO RECORDS (US). For fans of Slaughterhouse era Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees and the Beatles.

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4. „As the rainbow enters the sky and shines through the rain, all the birds lift their heads, singing. This album lures us into being blindly joyful, shying away from the terrible troubles of this world.”

French band CHOCOLAT BILLY is not a simple thing. For example, they played their first show opening for American avant-garde jazz guitarist Eugene Chadbourne in 2002. And the new album DELICATE DELI is – with a little overdrawn – as if it would be a common effort of Deerhoof and Chemical Brothers. It releases on KYTHIBONG and POTAGERS NATURES RECORDS (F).

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5. The female half of Moon Duo Sanae Yamada has written a solo album under the name of VIVE LA VOID during tours and recordings. Coming soon on SACRED BONES RECORDS (US).

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6. Chicago-born sometimes Brazil-resident avant-garde jazz musician BEN LAMAR GAY’s debut album DOWNTOWN CASTLES CAN NEVER BLOCK THE SUN a compilation album. Songs were taken from 7 albums he made over the last 7 years but never made the effort to actually release. It is coming in early May on INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM RECORDS (US). Anyway, he is one of the most prolific collaborators in Chicago’s creative music community. For example, he was a core component of Makaya McCraven’s last album Highly Rare, and we praise it.

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7. Cold wave disco, krautrock, post-punk, synth-pop. These are what I can say about the music of Canadian duo FREAK HEAT WAVES. And well, there is a strange thing. They named Texan hip-hop pioneer Dj Screw as their main influence. You can check these things if you listen to their new album BEYOND XXXL. It is released on TELEPHONE EXPLOSION RECORDS (CAN). Cassette on French label ATELIER CISEAUX.

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8. Cadillac born New Orleans based American traditionalist LUKE WINSLOW-KING plays a mix of old, but maybe eternal American tunes with his band: ragtime, country, blues, gospel, dixie, bluegrass, jazz, rock and roll with minimal and occasionally brass band orchestration. His new album BLUE MESA will be released on 11 May on BLOODSHOT RECORDS (US)

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9. The Jack Cades was born in late 2017 when Mike (Lead Guitar, Vocals) and Elsa (Rhythm Guitar, Vocals) decided to record some of their songs at Mole’s (Drums) notorious State Records Studios in Folkestone, Kent. They invited John Gibbs (The Masonics, The Wildebeests) to record bass on some of their songs at the time, which resulted in a mini debut LP „Music for Children”, which will be released on 18th May on DIRTY WATER RECORD (UK). It is a mix of a shared passion for inspirational sounds such as 1960s garage bands, snotty punk from the 1970s and sun-kissed sweaty rhythm n’ blues.

By the way, Jack Cade was the leader of a popular revolt in England in 1450. After the early success, he declared himself Lord Mayor of London. In this position, he initiated a series of tribunals dedicated to seeking out and convicting those accused of corruption. After such a sham trial the Lord High Treasurer and his son were beheaded. But many of the rebels, including Cade, began to engage in looting and drunken behavior. Gradually Cade’s inability to control his followers alienated the initially sympathetic citizens of London, who eventually turned against the rebels. He was murdered and his body underwent a mock trial and was ritually beheaded. Then his body was dragged through the streets of London before being quartered.

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10. “Marvin would kick your ass for nothing. A true genius, Marvin was a pure original” said Iggy Pop about the extraordinary musician MARVIN PONTIAC. And if Iggy is so into him than I introduce that true genius to you. MARVIN PONTIAC was born in 1932, the son of an African father from Mali and a white Jewish mother from New Rochelle, New York. The father’s original last name was Toure but he changed it to Pontiac when the family moved to Detroit, believing it to be a conventional American name. (… ) Reportedly Marvin’s music was the only music that Jackson Pollack would ever listen to while he painted, this respect was not reciprocated. In 1970 Marvin believed that he was abducted by aliens. (…) When he was arrested for riding a bicycle naked down the side streets of Slidell, it provided a sad but clear view of Marvin’s coming years. In 1971 he moved back to Detroit where he drifted forever and permanently into insanity. He was killed by a bus accident in 1977.

His only album GREATEST HITS was released posthumously in 1999. And this unstable genius recorded his African rhythm and blues songs with such great musicians as Marc Ribot, John Medeski, Billy Martin, Eszter Bálint and many others. It is recently re-released on NORTHERN SPY RECORDS (US). If you want to know more about MARVIN PONTIAC you can read his strange story here.

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11. GOSH! is a minimal psych-pop duo. When I got their new album ODYSSEY I wanted to show it to everybody. Hey, listen to this! So simple, bittersweet and beautiful.

The band has started when Padraig left his psychedelic post-americana band Nude Sunrise and started dating with Claire. One of the first moments they spent together there were guitars. Claire picked the bass and they learned “Badlands” from The Jesus and Mary Chain. Anyway, she never played any instruments before and GOSH! is her
first band. And it is among my brand new favourites. The new album ODYSSEY was written after they got back to Chicago from a chaotic tour. It remembers an underpaid journey as arduous as the real Ulysses’s, full of tragic twists and chemical quicksands. “All while watching the new season of Twin Peaks. It was a dark time, but we channeled that darkness and complete sense of defeat into creativity and in turn have produced something incredibly positive” – said Claire.

The album ODYSSEY will be released in mid-May on NICEY MUSIC (US).

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12. “Shit needs to be shaken up. I’m always moved by unrest or agitation. That’s what moves me. We need to shake things up. We like to be shaken up.” It’s the ars poetica of PARLOR WALLS guitarist/frontwoman Alyse Lamb who founded the band with the drummer and simultaneously keyboards player Chris Mulligan.

Their debut album decades after the wall between rock and jazz began to fall took us further down the road towards. Now on the EP EXO – which introduces clarinetist/programmer/multi-instrumentalist Jason Shelton to the band’s lineup -, PARLOR WALLS erode at the divisions between no wave and new wave by balancing melody and what Lamb and Mulligan refer to as “anti-melody.” It helps that the songs bear the recording and mixing touch of Joseph Colmenero, who has served as RZA’s personal engineer over the last decade and has also worked with Philip Glass, Björn and others. EXO will be released soon on NORTHERN SPY RECORDS (US).

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13. Murky and mystical Scottish chamber pop trio MODERN STUDIES‘ new album WELCOME STRANGERS is a bricolage where classicism meets experimentalism. It will be released on 18 May on FIRE RECORDS (UK). During the recordings, contributors include sisters, wives, toddlers, freeform saxophonists and The Pumpkinseeds, an ensemble featuring violins, violas, cellos, trombones, and vocals, were brought together to play in a remote village.

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14. English duo VIRGINIA WING‘s conceptual pop borrows from The Flying Lizard’s Fourth Wall, Yellow Pop Magic Orchestra and Lizzy Mercier Descloux’s Press Colour. New album ECSTATIC ARROW on FIRE RECORDS (UK)

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15. LOCATE S 1 aka Christina Schneider has made the album HEALING CONTEST with Of Montreal’s musicians. It was produced, engineered and also contributed by Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes who released it on his own label SYBARITIC PEER (US). There are too many chords to be pop, too catchy to be anything else.

Vinyl LP and CD on NICEY MUSIC (US).

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16. Hungarian psychedelic prog rock band PROTOPLASMA released their new album – in digital format, but it also will be released on cassette soon.

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17. This year the legendary unknown raw and wild synth-punk band PRIMITIVE CALCULATORS turns into 40. They (we) celebrate it with their third album ON DRUGS. The band started in 1978, in the same place and same time than the Birthday Party. After a single, they relocated to London, in the same time than the Birthday Party, and promptly broke up in 1980. But there was a post-split-up single under the name of Zye Ye Ye in England in 1981. The first album was released in 1980. It’s a live recording of a gig supporting the Boys Next Door in 1979. The Boys Next Door was renamed to Birthday Party. The first studio album THE WORLD IS FUCKED was released in 2013. And now the third album ON DRUGS finally here on IT RECORDS (AUS). It is a little bit different than the others. Heartbreak and loss also appear beside nihilism and rage at the world. Even, there is a ballad, a dark, nasty, dire dirge.

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18. Norwegian producer Tore Gjedrem of Ost & Kjex channels his love of comix, bohemia and fascination with human vice, the unspoken, the Red Light districts, the alleys of the mind into his alter ego SEX JUDAS. “I wanted to create a world where any musical idea is possible, wound together by the world and word of Judas, the ultimate sinner, reborn as a child of Venus.”

The album GO DOWN JUDAS was made with contributions by his friends in the Oslo scene as hometown legend Dj Pål Strangefruit Nyhus, composer Ole-Henrik Moe, jazz pianist Bugge Wesseltoft, Sidiki Camara from Mali playing that beautiful Ngoni, and multi-instrumentalist Ivar Snuten Winther. Music inspiration ranges from Africa to 80’s NYC, from Bohannon to Quasimoto, from Norwegian New Wave to Acid House. It touches anything from blues, funk, disco and post-punk to IDM, acid house and electronic explorer music. And it’s a fuckin’ funny album.It comes as a 2 x LP and digital release on OPTIMO MUSIC on May 25th.

Our columnist Franz Fekete has written about: Sex Judas brought David Holmes to my mind. There was a summertime open-air party in Budapest, and he was late because of police problems. Hours went after hours. When he finally arrived at dawn I was drunk and smoked so much that I was not able to speak normally. And after he started to play I was just shouting and wallowing on the grass. Same feeling.

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19. SHITTY PERSON is the solo-ish project of Seattle based Benjamin Thomas-Kennedy from Lesbian and Fungal Abyss. He said about: „I was really into Spacemen 3 and early Monster Magnet when I wrote this album. I was drawn to the desperation and self-hatred that those records express both musically and lyrically. I’ve always really loved drug music. I had also been studying Religious Trauma Syndrome and how leaving Fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity causes similar symptoms to posttraumatic stress disorder. I come from a long line of preachers and have a lot of resentment about how Christianity destroys children by teaching them to hate themselves.” Debut album JUDGEMENT on the Finnish label SVART.

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20. VITAL IDLES write primitive, whimsically brutal minimalist pop songs. They don’t just talk about disorder but often actively demonstrate it e.g. on there debut album LEFT HAND on UPSET THE RHYTHM RECORDS (UK).

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21. VERITAHROJA i.e. BLOODSTAINS is another compilation album of unknown and unheard punk rock from the Finnish 1970’s scene. The record opens up with RATTUS – “Täältä tullaan kuolema”. The band is one of the cornerstones of the Finnish 82-hardcore scene. Before settling down to the hardcore form the band made two seven inches with more experimental pieces – including a ska song! “Täältä tullaan kuolema” is a solid 77-punk rocker, which translates as “Here we come death”. Later on, the song was re-recorded with a speedier tempo and a more hardcore sound for the HARDCORE ’83 compilation of Propaganda Records.

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