it's january, 26th, strike week is next week, and we're feeling manic about it. its cold, but thats not whats making me shake. + live giveaway for pair of IDLES tix. caller too shy to say hi </3
full episode here ;;;; full playlist here
meta angel - fka twigs
oral - bjork, rosalia
person (angel mix) - petal supply
4 ÆM - grimes
xxx
intro - twine
needlessly wild - sleater-kinney
i thought you’d change - hotline TNT
dancer - IDLES, lcd soundsystem
snooze you lose - hot garbage
hertz - amyl and the sniffers
delete delete delete - NOBRO
sucker - peaches
know your rights - the clash
xxxx
hpv - slut island
dance yrself clean - lcd soundsystem
You know what you’re in for 45 seconds into opening track “Tension” when the singer starts trying to make a chorus happen apparently without the consent of the relentlessly single-minded guitarist (himself). Of course, you should’ve already known what you were in for when you tore open the free LP you got as a throw-in at the punk flea market and saw the following credits:
Maniks: screams of agony and guitar shredder
Shoeshiner: beatdown bass and howls of pride
Markus: Nuclear drum blasts of apocalypse warfare
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I fully (projecting for the people in the back of the Legion basement) endorse the existence of hardcore punk as a live experience, even this kind of droning thwapthwapthwapthwapthwap brand of tough guy hardcore. Our communities need places to wild out in the most primitive fashion, and hardcore shows are one of the few spaces where the working class and the overeducated wings of the Left mix. With that said, there was no need to record this band. Agony screamer Maniks (as of 2023, now a rapper who looks like he took a wrong turn at Crazy Town) has one of those scratchy yowls that reminds you of a goblin being forced down a garburator (an event we have all overheard surely), the bass basses, the guitar goes real fast but the drums work against it by jamming so many beats into each measure that the songs strobe more than they speed. We call prog masturbatory because it’s self-indulgent, but an album like Crimes mimics the form of masturbating with a dick more closely: some athleticism in the wrist, a blur of repetitive motion and smacking sounds, satisfying for the practitioner… but ultimately something that needs a little zhuzh to be an enjoyable spectacle for the observer.
Matt skiba smiled at me multiple times because i got barricade and when i did a little “🫶” during the show he did one back and winked at me!!! I almost fainted honestly, hoping someone on youtube has a clip because I unfortunately don’t. We also waved at eachother like goofballs during the show. :)) (also managed to snag a setlist and drumstick from Atom!)
The handwritten sticker on the plastic sleeve that came with my copy reads:
Ultrathin $10
Proto, psych punk
from Montreal.
Ultra cool.
Seconded! Ultrathin were a three piece that sounded like a rawer Ty Segall Band who hit for the cycle in the early ‘10s with a 7”, a split, an EP, and an LP before going silent. Their self-titled full-length is loud as hell, up there with a dollar bin Slade live record I picked up a few years back in terms of stuff that makes me feel like I’m bugging the neighbours no matter what the volume knob says. (Oddly, it sounds much better to me on vinyl than the digital version on Bandcamp does, and I’m not normally the kind of psycho who believes wax makes much difference.) The recording job by Marc Montanchez is excellent, full-bodied and never so pitchy you fear tinnitus, though it benefits from cranking the bass on your system. It feels like being with a killer band in the rehearsal studio (except the vocals sound good). “I Wanna Know” has a spacy riff so catchy it ends the only way possible: with the band sonically hammering a nail into the song so they won’t go right on playing it into infinity. On the other end of the album, Ultrathin indulge themselves on “In My Mind,” a melted Segall-worthy stomper with thrilling shredding from guitarist Shaun Anderson.
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This is one of the two records I have from Ottawa’s cult fav label Bruised Tongue. At one time their roster included most of Ottawa’s best young bands, including The Yips, New Swears, and the sorely missed Roberta Bondar, a shoulda-been mainstay of the noise rock scene. (BT was also home to one of my favourite artist/title combos, Fucked Corpse’s Led Zeppelin Four.) Bruised Tongue were predominantly a cassette label, and their LP releases were very DIY affairs, with the album art neatly glued onto a folded white cardstock sleeve. It works perfectly well, but the package is too thin to have a spine per se, which means their records tend to hide away on the shelf. I was glad to reintroduce myself to this one—hopefully we see more Bruised Tongue (and Ultrathin too, while I’m at it) releases in the future. Other than selling some pins and prints here and there, the label’s been too quiet by far since 2017.