GERMAN ARMY “MOVE9” C50 (Fort Evil Fruit)

Get fucking restless. “MOVE9” “refers to members of the Philadelphia black liberation group MOVE who were controversially convicted for the murder of a police officer killed during a raid on their residence in 1978. Six of the seven surviving members remain imprisoned.” This is the German Army MO. This is always the German Army MO. Forever shedding light on the casualties of capitalism and calling out the perpetrators, GeAr rip through another tape of destroyed dub and industrial mayhem. As always, I feel angered and empowered in the wake of it.

What are you/I gonna do then? There is rhythm in my bones, and does it get me off the couch where I am comfortable and consuming or is it powerless to stop the tide of world markets? Well, I guess it is actually pretty powerless as the GDP of all the nations of the world wash over me and consume me and spit me out and don’t think twice about it. Money doesn’t have feelings anyway. That’s why we’re faced with situations like that of MOVE. Agitators get dealt with.

GeAr never gets old. GeAr never dulls. GeAr is a voice that must be heard, like underground broadcasts infiltrating the mainstream, but repressed in a totalitarian state. We’ll see where this goes. Till then, “MOVE9” remains another stellar entry in the German Army catalog.

https://germanarmymusic.bandcamp.com/

https://fortevilfruit.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

NELEGAT “Intolerance” C40 (Amek Collective)

Nelegat’s take on deconstructed techno serves as a reminder to duck your head when being bombarded by digital shrapnel. That’s right, “Intolerance” is a granular study of electronic overload, the minute details piling on top of one another until they’ve overwhelmed you completely. It only takes a spark to ignite the mechanism, then BOOM! All that metallic debris just comes flying right at your face. Again, it’d behoove you to duck.

Or you could listen up when Nelegat’s commanding the room. The noise gets under your skin, eats away at your mind, riding strange waves of rhythm. It’s like a sick trance, one that’s not really going to put you to sleep but instead will make you suggestible to nefarious deeds. Nelegat is raising an army apparently, an army to clandestinely perform his dirty work for him. The trance is overwhelming, and I think I’m getting some ideas pumped into my cortex. What could it all mean?

https://amekcollective.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

CHECK! "Blue Twenty-Seven" (Blue Tapes)

From this point on when I’m referencing sparse, low-fi electronica, I’ll retrieve this tape as my example. I don’t know that a group has ever made such a collection work like this bunch does
For example, the opener, “2 da RDG” is nothing more than seqencers playing off one another-yet it’s engrossing and captivating from start to finish. But does a half an hour of this hold up? Let’s see…

Track two on the first side is ”innocent lie.”Knifeblade timekeeping segues into a wash of dense swirling which calms itself to find a more straight-ahead bass, synth and drums approach. If you’re inclined toward synth-pop, you’ll find comfort in this song. I can imagine Lauren Mayberry singing a vocal over this without much effort. The track ending the side again begins with some synth funny business before settling into, well, actually never settling in at all. The track concludes, the side is over.

As the side opens with “ENTER SONG” I’ll give you a slice of history about this band. Apparently the label owners guest curated the SUPERNORMAL festival and one of the acts that came from Japan was Check!! The band broke up before the label could get an album out of them but Cherry, their producer, managed to sift through the archives and assemble a tape which, to bring the story home, is this one I’m reviewing.

Meanwhile back in my headphones, side two continues down the ramshackle low-fi trail that the first side did, but never repeating itself. The lack of repitition, for me, is the glue that holds such a sparse undertaking in place. Without it, I’d surely never have made it through the first couple entries.

Generally, this type of approach isn’t successful in winning me over, but this bunch really pull it off. Too bad they broke up….

https://bluetapes.bandcamp.com/album/blue-twenty-seven

-- Robert Richmond

CREEPING PINK “______” (self-released)

The damage was done so long ago. Creeping Pink just dusted off the reasons and laid them out there for all of us to observe, whether we like it or not. This is a barely titled cassette. What is it, “______”? That’s essentially nothing. I typed six underscores. I don’t know if I got the number right. But it doesn’t matter, these “numerous vignettes of American life” are six underscores toward understanding that we’re hanging by six underscores, ready to plunge into an abyss of our own making.

The damage was done so long ago, but Creeping Pink said “FUCK IT LET’S GO” and ripped a bunch of tunes out of the still-beating heart of America’s soon-to-be corpse. They sprinkled these tunes over several releases, but “______” is the most recent, and it’s a dooz. It’s like half-cocked Pavement noodles run through a Kinks ringer, and that’s before we even account for the synthesizer squirts. No, this is a band, a quartet, but don’t ignore the earnest quirk or the short tracks. Each piece is part of the equation, and melody is what ties it all together. This is hard to turn off, honestly. The nothing blooms into pagan ritual, and the sun rises on everybody. The sun always rises on everybody. Showing us off to ourselves and to everybody else. Then we live the vignettes.

Apple pie, baby. Apple pie.

https://creepingpink.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

PERSONAL BANDANA “[sic]” (Hibernator Gigs)

As you all know, [sic] implies that an error in something you’re quoting was there to begin with, and you had nothing to do with it. You just reprinted it as you found it, but you don’t want anybody to think you’re stupid. Not an incomprehensible reaction – I don’t want anybody to think I’m stupid either, and I use [sic] all the time. Nobody ever has to use [sic] when they’re quoting me.

Personal Bandana, the Casio-wielding duo of Dave Gibson and Travis Thatcher, doesn’t make any errors. Armed with only their keyboards of choice, Gibson and Thatcher whip up righteous synth-prog epics with a seeming ease totally in sync with one of them wearing a Soft Machine shirt in their press photo. In fact, that press photo may be telling – Personal Bandana looks like a couple of me’s (apostrophe intentional for ease of reading, no [sic] needed!), me being just a bespectacled chowderhead who loves computer music and science fiction. Personal Bandana and I would get along swimmingly.

Circuits bent in all the proper 1980s fantasy film ways, flange applied appropriately, and crates full of Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder records in their practice space, Gibson and Thatcher add to the canon, injecting some much-needed energy and imagination into the genre. Actually, wait – does the genre need that kind of injecting? Maybe it’s doing OK after all – there’s some good stuff coming out of Holodeck and Terry Tapes and stuff like that. Personal Bandana just fits right in, period, no typos or fukcups.

https://personalbandana.bandcamp.com/

https://hibernatorgigs.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

SARIN “Oversize Novelty Tape” C35 (Personal Archives)

I’m familiar with oversize novelty foam fingers, the ones you see at sporting events (I myself have quite the collection), but an oversize nov… er, “Oversize Novelty Tape”? Now THAT’S something new! Good thing I can squeeze it into my cassette deck – I probably don’t need those springs and sprockets that popped out of there in the midst of all the shoving. It plays too – I’m kind of glad for that.

There’s nothing “novelty” about Sarin, a quartet composed of Kyle, Kaylee, Mathias, and Matt. They improvise dronescapes with cinematic flair, almost begging for their work to be included as incidental passages in some auteur’s latest film. In fact, I bet they hang around backlot gates all the time, just waiting for bigwigs to emerge. I don’t know how they can afford the airfare from Des Moines.

If I’m gonna use “cinematic” as an adjective for music, I better back it up, right? “Oversize Novelty Tape” ONLY does mood, and the two seventeen-minute pieces that comprise the tape ooze restraint and craft, demanding an active imagination while listening. Good thing my imagination’s probably my greatest attribute! Lotta tense work here, punctuated at times by synth trills that sound like the whale-searching alien in “Star Trek IV.” So have I convinced you to buy this tape yet, dumbass? Well if not, then double dumbass on you!

https://personalarchives.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

SPEED BABES “Orangetape” C21 (What’s For Breakfast? Records)

What’s for the Speed Babes’ breakfast? Well, garage flavored rocks with rock stuffed garages fillets and fuzzy-fried, smoothly sliced garage rock toast. Are you getting the picture? If you want something Garage Rocky (notice the capitalization here), the Speed Babes have your Orange(tape)juice spiked with 80 proof Garage Rock. If you like garage rock, you’ll like the Speed Babes’ “Orangetape”. It’s fairly undeniable.

https://wfbr.bandcamp.com/album/orangetape

and/or

https://thespeedbabes.bandcamp.com/

— Jacob An Kittenplan

COSMIC HALITOSIS “Where is She?” C25 (What’s For Breakfast? Records)

I rarely fawn over pop-punkish bands, but Cosmic Halitosis (what a name!!!) is pretty goddamn drool-worthy. This three-piece is just as rhythmically dialed in as they are deft with dynamic interplay, their consistent change-ups never seeming to show up a single measure too late. The vocals (and lyrics) slide easily back and forth between self-consciously sonorous and grit-edged cathartic, with an easily relatable earnestness in self-deprecatory release. 

If I had to pay an up & coming band to teach pop-punk songwriting to youngsters, this band would easily fit the bill. Think Fifteen-meets-Motley Crüe-meets-90s-No-Idea-Records-roster, but without a trace of pretentiousness or political sentiment to be sniffed. I really hope these folx get as big as they wanna, cz they seriously deserve it!

https://wfbr.bandcamp.com/album/where-is-she

and/or

https://cosmichalitosis.bandcamp.com/

— Jacob An Kittenplan

PERPETUAL WEREWOLF "Enter the Mountain Gateway" (Tape Dad)

I can only imagine the plight of the Perpetual Werewolf. No one understands the constant hairiness, the uncontrollable drooling, the murderous rage, or the hunger. Oh god, the hunger. It's enough to make a human beg for death... or, at least to a cure for the curse. Let's go with "cure." We're not a macabre bunch here.

Perpetual Werewolf taps into that rage. Maybe not the other stuff (and hopefully not the "murderous" part). But on "Enter the Mountain Gateway," the trio is angry, and that translates into pretty loud. Which also translates into pretty ... fun? Yeah, fun. You heard me.

"I've Chosen Darkness" starts off the tape in what seems like a death metal direction, but that's a red herring. Perpetual Werewolf settles into a nice angular punk-metal groove after it, not unlike Unsane or some of the more abrasive AmRep bands. God knows there was a lot of blood on those Unsane covers. Maybe those were the crime scene photos following a werewolf attack.

Yikes, grisly.

Perpetual Werewolf is grisly and gnarly, and their throat-shredding vibe is perfect if you're looking for that kind of thing. Very well done. Now I'll go back to crunching this bone between my vast mandibles. (Oh, did I not mention? I'm the head werewolf.)

https://perpetualwerewolf.bandcamp.com/

https://tapedad.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan