Mastering Postman “The Hive Mind Tape”.
Recorded and Mixed by Graeme Mckinnon.
Post Punk Canada.
Remastering Hassle Bastards “s/t” on Demo Tapes.
“Happy 50th Birthday Sik-O-War. Kings of UK Thrash Hassle Bastards were basically Chumbawamba in wind up mode and they sent this four track demo to Ben Sik-O-War from Raising Hell fanzine as he loved thrash. There was only ever one copy made. It’s under two minutes on a one sided 7″ of short, sharp and raging early 80’s thrash that harks back to the glory days of early 80’s European hardcore. Do you remember the thrash band The Ex and Chumbawamba did together called Antidote. They released one demo One Does Not Sell The Earth Upon Which The People Walk and one 7” Destroy Fascism! – well this is like that but harder, faster and funnier. “
Buy it here!
Mastering Rakta “III” on Nada Nada Discos, Dama Da Noite, Dê o Fora, and Iron Lung Records.
RAKTA – III LP w/download (LUNGS-086)
Brazil’s RAKTA is back with 6 new powerfully feminine trips through the fog. Simultaneously claustrophobic and cavernous. You can feel pulsing bass and thundering battery intertwine, akin to a snake coiling around your leg, pulling you down into the murky vortex. A flourish of atmospheric keyboard and vocal clamor pulls you right back to the surface just in time to be sucker punched by silence. This garland will leave you reeling.
500 copies on blue vinyl housed in a heavy duty sleeve. Art by Mateus Mondini. Sounds by Bernardo Pacheco.
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Mastering Steel Chains “s/t” on Dirt Cult Records.
“The debut 7″ from one of my current favorite PDX punk bands, Steel Chains. The band plays ridiculously great emotive and melodic minor chord punk for fans of The Wipers, Daylight Robbery, The Stops, etc. Members have also spent time in bands such as The Observers, Clorox Girls, Drunken Boat, Defect Defect, PRF and more. Holy super group!”
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Mastering Good Throb “s/t” on La Vida Es Un Mus.
“Hear the notorious London punk band’s latest obscenity. Following their first two singles and 2014 LP, this record offers four rude and crude tunes. Emerging from the musical manifestation of a bad acid trip, songs kick in with militaristic drumming, underpinning mean riffs and heart-pumping bass, overlaid with the vulgar vocal thunderings of an irritable goblin woman. Distinct themes include: a loving ode to unsuccessful murderer and feminist outlier of the 1970s Valerie Solanas; a poisonous take-down of slick dicks everywhere; a disgusting and treasonous anti-monarchic polemic; and an erotic re-imagining of England’s humdrum motorway service stations. Now doomed to (temporary, we hope) geographical separation, this record will be the last squirt of noises from these sourpuss primitives for the known future.
Gloriously cloaked in a hot red fold-out cover by singer KY Ellie depicting the Duke of Edinburgh at the point of climax, as disease-like man-milk splatters and creeps over barely-disguised phalluses and a smoking shrimp. Also includes a poster of distorted children of the night from the ugly brain of Throb bassist Ash Tray.”
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Remastering Jack & The Rippers “No Desire” on Incognito Records and Static Age.
“Limited reissue of this classic Swiss-punk classic from 1979. JACK & THE RIPPERS were one of the 1st punk bands in Switzerland, based in Geneva, which has at that time an equally vibrant punk scene such as Zurich. Musically the band can be describe as brilliant power punk with strong English strike on the right track. So enjoy this wonderful piece of punk-rock! Comes with insert and a cover, treated with an especially UV-continual varnish!”
Buy it here!
Remastering Jack & The Rippers “No Desire” on Incognito Records and Static Age.
“Limited reissue of this classic Swiss-punk classic from 1979. JACK & THE RIPPERS were one of the 1st punk bands in Switzerland, based in Geneva, which has at that time an equally vibrant punk scene such as Zurich. Musically the band can be describe as brilliant power punk with strong English strike on the right track. So enjoy this wonderful piece of punk-rock! Comes with insert and a cover, treated with an especially UV-continual varnish!”
Buy it here!
Mastering Nachthexen “s/t” on Kids of the Lughole.
Recorded and mixed by Ben Hunter.
Taken from Just Some Punk Songs:
“Nachthexen are a female fronted synth punk band from Sheffield featuring Emma Thacker (vocals), Donna (synth), Fiona (bass) and Olga Rienda (drums). They take their name from the German nickname for the women military aviators of the 558th Night Bomber Regiment (later known as the 46th “Taman” Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment) of the Soviet Air Forces. The English translation is Night Witches.
Last year saw them release the name your price ep titled The Other. They followed it up last April with a s/t 7″ ep on Kids Of The Lughole Records. (Just a quick note, Kids Of The Lughole have put out some of 2016’s coolest music, this blog has already featured Sievehead, Clean Shirts and Detergents but there’s others that are definitely worth checking out : https://kidsofthelughole.bandcamp.com/ ).
Back when I was at school, the likes of Cabaret Voltaire and The Human League were pioneering synth punk and like Nachthexen, both were from Sheffield. Upholding that city’s fine tradition of this kind of music, from the s/t ep, this is Ring Ring…..”
Mastering Cold Pumas “The Hanging Valley” on Faux Discx and Gringo Records.
Recorded and mixed by Mark ‘Mug’ Jasper at Sound Savers.
“The long-awaited follow-up to 2012’s best-in-show ‘Persistent Malaise’ offers at least 33.3% of its buffet to shimmering, inward, mulch-heavy ballads — ‘A Change of Course’, ‘The Shaping of the Dream’, ‘Murmur of the Heart’ — showing a sensitivity that inevitably does nothing for the craft beer revolution. If truth be told, the remaining 66.6% threatens to look equally indifferent when served on a wooden board or beside a miniature stainless steel plant pot of hand-cut triple-cooked fries, but such is life.
These songs are mostly about discouragement and the black dog, the tepid whines of self-inflicted unemployment, the repetition of life’s repetitions, the creative dormancies of romantic contentment. Disappointingly there lies no outward mention of pop-up launches, sides of ‘slaw, chakra schools, the urban woodsman or an allusion to an artisan approach.
Across its 38 minutes, the ‘The Hanging Valley’ instead covers such further peripheral subjects as the imperceptible bow towards the thirty-something honours list, the vacuous, rising diphthong of the inner-city commute and the suppressed rush of blood towards vainglorious internet smear.
‘Now a quartet of fraternal pedants’ whimper the band’s dusty social media accounts in reference to the twilight addition of Lindsay Corstorphine on the bass guitar, ‘cascading down the woodwork, slapping the pegs’ as he goes, dear reader. In truth The Hanging Valley owes us much to Corstorphine’s ample stringmanship as his encouragement toward loosening the conservative shackles of olde. Certainly a weakening of the old guard has taken place somewhere, the gamut of emotion ridden more obliquely and less shamefully now. Ballads stare teary-eyed out of windows towards rain-swept rivieras, vocals and guitars have pulled themselves gamely out of the reverb-soaked hollow and those ‘for the rockers’ — ‘Slippery Slopes’, ‘Severed Estates’, ‘Fugue States’ et al — no longer grasp for the safety of the halfway house but aim for the stars. ‘More sherberta tambourine’ they cried in the studio, and more sherberta there was. “
Buy it here!
Mastering Rainbow Reservoir “Coco Sleeps Around” on Odd Box Records.
“Exciting new discovery from Oxford for fans of Tullycraft, Cars Can Be Blue, Horowitz and the like. This is top notch powerpop. Limited 7.”
Buy it here!