New Releases

Skate Death

You Break It You Buy It

PNV

***Straight reissue of this 1985 20 song LP from Anchorage, Alaska's finest, Skate Death. With a name like Skate Death, it will not surprise you to hear that the group played meat and potatoes brash American hardcore. And coming from Alaska, you can hear the focus and prolific songwriting that often come out of an off the beaten path scene. Fans of roughneck 80s skatecore will eat this one up.

Guided By Voices

Crawlspace Of The Pantheon

GBV Inc

Guided By Voices’ last album Thick Rich And Delicious (October 2025) was lauded by NPR’s All Things Considered and picked #1 on Magnet Magazine’s Best Albums Of 2025. The single “We Outlast Them All” from this latest, Crawlspace Of The Pantheon, is an anthemic victory lap on album #44 from the indie rock stalwarts.Robert Pollard told Rolling Stone: “ ‘We Outlast Them All’ could be our ‘We Are The Champions’ but it’s not necessarily about us. It’s about anyone who perseveres over a long period of time.” On Crawlspace Of The Pantheon: “I worked much more diligently on this set of lyrics. I chiseled away at lines and sections and phrasings...I wanted them to have an overall emotionally conceptual feel. At times it feels somewhat autobiographical.”Guided By Voices will not be on tour in 2026. Pollard recently told Magnet: “Why would we stop playing live and make these kinds of records? I don’t know. We do what we wanna do.”“Pollard is the greatest rock lyricist of all time.” —Dennis Cooper

Maureens, The

Don't Give Up

Meritorio

***The Maureens are the soundtrack of the perfect late-summer evening, but that feeling works just as well in October or February. Their guitar-driven pop exudes a warm, timeless atmosphere while daring to take quirky turns: fresh and catchy, yet also steeped in intense melancholy, resulting in a sound entirely their own. Five albums and around seventy songs later, Maureens are celebrating their fifteenth anniversary this year—an adventure that began in the Utrecht music scene. The band members now live across the country, but their signature sound remains intact: the songs of singer/guitarist Hendrik-Jan de Wolff are infused with a love for melody and harmony, evident in every arrangement. Their previous album Everyone Smiles received remarkably positive reviews, including coverage in OOR and four stars in de Volkskrant. For their fifth and most recently recorded album, Don’t Give Up, they returned to the studio with Frans Hagenaars. Most of the record was recorded live in a remote wooden cottage in the Belgian Ardennes, giving the songs a raw, immediate energy. Once again, they are writing a new chapter in their quest for the ultimate song. Maureens have performed in living rooms and major venues like Paradiso and TivoliVredenburg, toured Spain, and closed a show at the legendary Cavern Club in Liverpool. Their hunger for writing new songs and playing in new places remains as strong as ever.

Rural France

SLOTHS

Meritorio

*** Rural France is the project of Tom Brown (Teenage Tom Petties) and Rob Fawkes, who began writing songs together after both moving from London to rural Wiltshire and starting families. What started as a casual way to meet up soon turned into a band built around Tom’s scrappy slacker pop songs and Fawkes’ melodic, jangly guitar lines.After releasing their debut on Half-a-Cow Records, the duo recorded two lo-fi albums in a garage—RF (2021) and Exacamondo! (2024)—both released by Meritorio Records and warmly received by the DIY indie community for their short, melodic songs inspired by the spirit of Guided by Voices, Teenage Fanclub and Pavement.Their fourth album, SLOTHS (out May 8 via Meritorio), sees the band expanding their sound. Mixed by Rob Slater, it’s their clearest and most expansive record yet, adding organ, horns and mellotron while keeping the jangly, scruffy charm that defines Rural France. The songs reflect on getting older, time passing, and the strange realities of adult life—thoughtful, melodic indie rock with heart and humor.

Deafkids

CICATRIZES DO FUTURO

Neurot Recordings

The Brazilian duo DEAFKIDS returns with a vital and combustive new album, CICATRIZES DO FUTURO (SCARS OF THE FUTURE). This nine-track sonic assault forges a path beyond the conventions and boundaries of static musical genres. Here, electronic fury and feverish organic percussion collide with a relentless Latin American punk spirit."Conceptually, the album is a visceral diagnosis of a world intoxicated by its own fictions of power, tracing the anatomy of a systemic grand deception and exploring its mechanics of psychological, social, and material domination, the indelible marks imprinted on bodies and minds and it's catastrophic consequences. It is a journey from the poisoned and addicted collective psyche to the desperate search for an antidote, while the future seems to be already cursed by the very forces that pretend to build it. Yet, for all its thematic weight, CICATRIZES DO FUTURO is hypnotically danceable - physical and ritualistic music that demands body movement as a form of mental cleansing. The album doesn't just reflect a fractured and violent world — it breathes desire to live and resist through new sonic paths.""Our music comes from the perception of the environmental, political, and moral toxicity that permeates our realities under such conditions. In the context of the album, the scars are those of a brutally stolen past reflected in a wicked future. A permanent mark of violence is also a memory that will never be silenced!"

Pinky Tex

The Singing Angel From Devil Rock Canyon

Rocks In Your Head

***Born in the ashes of WWII, the only girl of seven children, they called her Pinky. She grew up in the windy plains of the Texas panhandle, singing in the church choir and dreaming of being on the stage one day. Just 18, she met the love of her life and soon married rodeo cowboy Cole Tex. Sharing a common thirst for adventure, they traveled the country roads together. He wrote the songs and Pinky sang them, performing in small roadhouses and honky-tonks all over the southwestern states. These are some of the few recordings that still exist.

Francis Of Delirium

Run, Run Pure Beauty

Dalliance Recordings

The epitome of a modern artist, Jana Bahrich does most things herself, no matter how painstaking—writing, producing, directing, often hand painting t-shirts the day of shows when the band have run out of merch. This has helped give her band Francis of Delirium a unique identity, with her rock confessionals breathing a new life in to the genre and her paintings creating a striking design aesthetic.Released as she was finishing high school, 2020’s single 'Quit Fucking Around’ was a great introduction and it remains one of her most enduring songs. Shortly after it’s release, she signed to artist-first indie Dalliance Recordings (Gia Margaret, HighSchool, lilo) and three EPs—All Change (2020), Wading (2021), The Funhouse (2022) and a striking debut album - Lighthouse (2024)—on and Jana has Francis of Delirium flying.While the EP’s fizzed with promise, her debut album Lighthouse landed its punches. Seeking a more vulnerable and open sonic palette, she wove in pop elements to create anthems that celebrated heartbreak and love. Lead singles ‘Real Love’ and ‘First Touch’ were the first tracks she made with an outsider - working with GRAMMY winning producer Catherine Marks (boygenius, The Killers, Wolf Alice)—while the rest of the album was produced by Jana herself and day one collaborator Chris Hewett. The critics were impressed too—“Bahrich’s choruses, almost every one, are lumpin-your-throat gorgeous.” NME; “Jana Bahrich seems too young for this tremendous debut’s ambitious anthems.” Uncut; “A rewarding experience that captures a talented, young artist at the crossroads between adolescence and adulthood." Paste.Live,...

Glass, Philip

Music With Changing Parts

Superior Viaduct

Philip Glass, the great American composer, was already in his mid-30s before his first album appeared, and then only because he produced the double LP himself. Music With Changing Parts was the inaugural release on his own Chatham Square imprint in 1971.At this point, Einstein on the Beach, Glass’ first opera, was still five years away. Yet in Changing Parts, one can already hear much of his vocabulary in full bloom: the buoyant arpeggios, the melding of electronic and acoustic instruments, the elongated drones of human voice, the primary emphasis on pulse (an interest he shared with fellow composer Steve Reich) and the ecstatic potential inherent in repetition.The album features the original Philip Glass Ensemble—the composer himself, along with Jon Gibson, Dickie Landry, Art Murphy, Steve Chambers and Robert Prado—playing Farfisa organs and woodwinds as well as Barbara Benary on electric violin.As Glass describes in his memoir Words Without Music, he secured a $500 interest-free loan for the recordings’ initial release from the Hebrew Free Loan Society—an organization intended to help immigrants from the Old World upon arrival in the US. Though Glass was merely the grandson of immigrants, the venture wasn’t far off the society’s charter as Changing Parts helped usher in a new world of sound that would become known as Minimalism.Chatham Square went on to release albums by other composers in Glass’ circle, including Gibson and Landry. The label was named after the Manhattan intersection where Landry had a studio and the ensemble rehearsed.Born in Baltimore in...

Godthrymm

Projections

Profound Lore

With their third album Projections, UK doom metal juggernaut Godthrymm have completed their Visions Trilogy begun with 2020’s their Reflections debut album and followed with 2023’s acclaimed Distortions. During the band’s discourse since the release of Reflections, Godthrymm have been recognized as the new emerging band from the UK to bring back the glorious aura of early-mid ‘90s UK doom metal, most notably formulated by the Peaceville Three (My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, Anathema). As expected, considering the band was formed and helmed by UK doom metal veteran Hamish Glencross (ex-My Dying Bride / Vallenfyre / Solstice) and features doom metal drummer extraordinaire Shaun Taylor-Steels (ex-My Dying Bride / Anathema / Solstice). So in this sense, the classic UK doom metal DNA has already been implemented within their sonic fabric. Projections sees Godthrymm continue to develop and broaden their sound even further, building upon the cornerstones of Distortions. Now with an expanded lineup which includes keyboardist co-vocalist Catherine Glencross, bassist Bob Crolla and new second guitarist Kris McLaughin, Projections is their most layered, varied and complex release yet, all while still upholding the colossal emotionally charged heavy doom backbone that has defined the core of the band’s sound.

Joyner, Simon

Tough Love

Grapefruit / Sophmore Lounge / BB* Island

For over 30 years, Simon Joyner has been an anomaly--a wholly independent artist focused solely on his craft. The Omaha-based singer-songwriter began releasing music in the early ‘90s and has walked an unbroken line ever since. Joyner’s songs of quiet joy and heartache have impacted different generations of fellow artists, showing up as overt influence in acts like Bright Eyes or Kevin Morby, and as flickers of shared perspectives in the Lenkers, Oldhams, and Molinas that followed.Tough Love, Joyner’s 19th studio album, continues this upward trend. While intrinsically linked to the personal grief of 2024’s Coyote Butterfly, the autobiographical album Joyner made in the wake of his son’s death, this new album explores the concept of tough love as a dichotomy applied to various fictional relationships including romantic, familial, and political. This balancing act comes through in vivid portrayals of everyday heartache and in the exploration of political rage and the betrayals of the American Dream.One of the marvels of Joyner’s catalog is how his patterns don’t repeat but transform. Knowing nods to Cohen, Dylan, and the Velvets have been part of his songwriting since the early lo-fi days, but the ways these touchstones get infused keep changing. While Joyner’s ragged acoustic songs are in the spotlight, they’re prodded by electric guitars and imbued with experimental tendencies. Rock songs split the difference between minimal grooves learned from Loaded-era Velvet Underground and the ecstatic rhythmic weirdness of Can. By the time we arrive at the penultimate track, “Anniversary Song,” the ghost...

Son Palenque

Ricon de Africa

Electric Cowbell

***The legendary Afro-Colombian group Son Palenque, founded and directed by singer and composer Justo Valdés, celebrates over four decades of musical history with the release of their new album Rincón de África. It marks an important milestone in the band’s 40-year recording career and stands as a vibrant testament to the living musical traditions of Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Musically, the album moves across several traditional and contemporary Afro-Caribbean styles. Listeners will hear the driving rhythms of champeta in songs such as “Rincón de África,” “Chapeto,” and “Novia de Barranquilla,” alongside traditional forms including chalupa, sexteto, and bullerengue in tracks like “El Puente de Palenque,” “Anaito,” and “Mina Toto.” The result is a dynamic recording that bridges ancestral rhythms with the modern Afro-Caribbean sound that Son Palenque helped pioneer.The vinyl version contains 12 tracks, including 10 previously unrecorded compositions, written by key members of the group including Justo Valdés, Pánfido Valdés, and Enrique Tejedor.Pressed on limited green vinyl.

Sumos

Luck

Meritorio

***Sumos are a scuzz-pop quartet from Manchester, UK. The project began as a bedroom recording outlet for Joel Sloan and Kyle Tarbuck after a hiatus from playing together in a previous band. After laying the groundwork for their first EP, Weird Summer, the group expanded into a four-piece with the addition of Kyle’s sister Siobhán McKnight on bass and Andrew Kilroy on drums. Their debut album, Surfacing, was released in 2023 via Meritorio Records and Safe Suburban Home. Part of the UK DIY scene, Sumos have shared stages with like-minded acts and label-mates such as The Planes, Teenage Tom Petties, Dignan Porch, Perennial, Oort Clod, Special Friend, Stuart Pearce, Park Safely, and Hugs of the Sky. Sumos’ sound is built on a foundation of melodic indie rock and noisy power-pop. Key influences include Husker Du, The Lemonheads, Pixies, P.S. Eliot, The Beths, Mikal Cronin, East River Pipe, and Mike Krol.

Mad Iris

s/t

Ba Da Bing!

Toronto’s Mad Iris has been playing live in the local underground scene since 2023, blending noise rock, punk, and shoegaze into a sound that honors influences like Sonic Youth, Pixies, and the Breeders. Their self-titled debut album covers desire, obsession, longing, and grief, taking place in basements, night buses, and gas stations, with gum stuck to desks and drinks spilled on sticky floors. Throughout the record, distorted vocals crash and ascend in unison with thrashing drums, plump basslines, and staticky guitar overdrive, lurching between restraint and eruption.A Mad Iris song teeters on disaster, shifting from gritty feedback to intentional sloppy haze, like the sound of a tape machine overheating. Strong, sparkling production is complemented by a wall of noisy visuals: videos that emulate a worn VHS tape, scrapbook show flyers, and alleyway photoshoots. “Our visuals are an integral part of the band’s style,” says bassist Ela Hinatsu, who shares lead vocals with guitarist Kaiya Rosie, often on the same song. With a deliberate sound, style, and presence, Mad Iris goes beyond being a band, becoming more of an art project.Opening track, “Silver Nails”, sets hushed, breathy vocals floating over a screechy guitar line, played by Patrick Muldoon, before collapsing into distorted, whiny grit and greedy screams, ending the track with a guitar solo from producer / mixer Ximuna Diego, who, with his own musical expertise, is the secret to Mad Iris’ signature distorted sound. The album oscillates between sweet and bitter, pretty and dirty, lust and shame. “Poor Baby” is...

Vic Bondi And His Issues

s/t

Alternative Tentacles

The title of Vic Bondi’s 27th release, Vic Bondi And His Issues, might come off as self-deprecation but in reality, it’s closer to diagnosis. Nearly four decades after helping define politically literate American hardcore, Bondi is less interested in nostalgia than in accountability: personal, historical, and national. Asked what keeps him making music, Bondi kicks it straight: “A beating heart, a tin ear, and raw stubbornness.” That might sound like a joke, but there’s a truth to it. Stubbornness, in Bondi’s case, has always meant refusing to let power go unexamined. Written in Seattle and recorded over two days at Soundhouse Recording Studio, both the sound and the lineup are lean and deliberate. Immediate, enthralling, and crafted with razor precision, its name (bestowed by Jello Biafra) winks at confession while pointing squarely at the culture.Bondi’s political lens was formed early. The son of a U.S. Navy captain, he moved twenty-two times before turning eighteen. “When you grow up military, you move every two years or so, whether you want to or not,” he says. “So, no matter how formidable your father might seem, someone else is actually calling the shots in a way that affects you directly, especially if you’re a kid.” That instability, he explains, “predisposes you to a healthy skepticism about authority figures.” Bondi has been mining that skepticism for decades, emerging as a founding force behind Chicago’s early-’80s hardcore movement with Articles of Faith. Following the 1985 breakup of Articles of Faith, Bondi spent time in Jones...

White Heaven

Next to Nothing

Black Editions

***Black Editions presents the expanded and definitive edition of White Heaven's brilliant third album Next to Nothing. Originally released in 1994 by Tokyo's Noon Disk, the full album was only ever available in a limited vinyl pressing of 250 copies. Since then, it has become one of the most sought-after artifacts of the '90s Japanese underground and is regarded as a highpoint of Japanese psychedelic rock. Led by vocalist, songwriter and conceptualist You Ishihara, the album finds the group in a phase of refinement. Taking a more intricate and open approach, the music is buoyant and light yet at the same time, nocturnal and introspective. Next to Nothing marks the first time guitarists Michio Kurihara and Soichiro Nakamura appear together on record after having separate turns as lead guitar on the group's first two albums. The pairing is revelatory as they weave luminous melodic lines, sometimes in parallel, sometimes opening into sustained intricate counterpoint. Bassist Koji Shimura and drummer Ken Ishihara shuffle and swing in parallel with a fluid, sinuous rhythm, while flourishes of synthesizer, mellotron and the introduction of Go Hirano on keyboards and piano deepens the group's sound with orchestral colors and a soft cinematic haze. Across the album, clear, shimmering guitar tones and gentle chord progressions are layered with bright arpeggiated figures and darker minor-key passages. The songs develop through gradual changes in tone and dynamics as Ishihara's voice reveals a gentle yearning and wistfulness. An extended version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "The Look of...

Potential Threat

Singles And Demos 1982-85

PNV

***Collection of singles and demos from this mega crucial UK hardcore outfit. With their 1982 debut EP, it would be easy to peg the group as a standard issue Riot City/No Future style punk outfit, and truthfully, "Vice Squad meets Discharge" isn't too far off base. However, whereas so many UK groups of that era folded after a single or two, Potential Threat continued into the mid-80's--UK hardcore's nascent "crust" era—and were able to keep up with the ferocity of emerging group's such as Sacrilege, Concrete Sox, Heresy and the like. Few groups were able to bridge generations of punk like that while maintaining a sonic ferocity and politically militant stance, and if only for that 80's punk devotees might give them respect. Thankfully, in addition to great principles, the group also left behind an array of top notch recordings, as evidenced by this collection.

No Crisis

What's Done Is Done - 1982-1987

PNV

***Compilation of all studio material from No Crisis, the seminal first wave HC punk outfit from Huntington Beach circa 1981-1987. Collector scum may know this group's infectious 1982 12" "She's Into The Scene," an infectious slab of HB struttin' thug punk on par with Posh Boy or Frontier's hardest hitters from that era. Beyond that handful of anti-parent bashers, though, the group has about a dozen seldom heard tracks from various contemporaneous sessions that never received the vinyl treatment...Until now! Punkenvomit is proud to present the definitive collection of this cult OC punk brigade, including the 1982 12" and all known studio sessions.

Gichard

Chins For Lefty

Night School

Chins For Lefty is the debut album and first recording by Gichard, a new duo chronicling the absurdities of end-stage capitalism and mouldering social rituals from their vantage point in Glasgow, Scotland. Recorded primarily in the band’s home studio straight to tape, Chins For Lefty combines gorgeous, ramshackle melody, DIY kosmische punk, drum machine + synth and, in vocalist/lyricist Lisa Jones, an absurdist commentator on the human condition as it navigates the anxieties of the modern world. Instrumentalist Chas Lalli’s swirling music accompaniment stitches an evocative mix of musical styles, the ragged wind beneath the lyrics’ wings. Although the duo first collaborated in their previous group Dragged Up, their disparate musical and artistic backgrounds make for an alluring mix in Gichard. Lalli has spent the last 20 years in the Glasgow underground, most notably in the noise rock group VOM, while Lisa Jones’s practice was in poetry and spoken word. Beginning as co vocalist in her previous band, in Gichard her lyrics are centre stage; the vision concocted alongside Lalli amounts to a total world-build. Chins For Lefty scans almost like a novel, with each track elucidating a skewed universe that bears only some resemblance to the one you and I partake in. Like all works of fiction Gichard’s songs are rooted in reality and the lived experiences of its authors, but here characters are exaggerated, social mores and habits are pulled apart to reveal their inherent alienness. Universal emotions are laid bare, the bright light of anxious examination searching...

Pentagram

High Voltage - Live At Spotsylvania '78

Riding Easy

This is an extremely rare recording when the band was a 5 piece with 2 guitar players.“Live at Spotsylvania” captures Pentagram performing an all-night backyard concert in Spotsylvania, Virginia, at bassist Martin Sweeney’s mother’s house, in front of roughly 500 fans camping out for the weekend. Recorded around 1978 during the band’s short “High Voltage” era, the show began at 1 a.m. on a foggy night and featured rare songs with a raw, powerful performance. The audio blends a low-level board mix with ambient mic recording for surprisingly strong sound quality. A memorable moment came when a firecracker went off perfectly on the beat during the heavy second half of “20 Buck Spin,” echoing through the trees. – Bobby LieblingRecorded in 1978 in Spotsylvania at Martin Swaney’s backyard. The audio is a great recording for being outdoors and cleaned up by mastering guru Nick Townsend.Vocals – Bobby LieblingBass – Martin SwaneyLead Guitar – Paul TrowbridgeLead Guitar – Richard KuehtDrums – Joe Hasselvander

Allred, Joseph

The Old Gods

Carbon

***Joseph Allred is a Tennessee-based guitarist, singer, multi-instrumental composer, and visual artist with deep roots in the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee and Kentucky. Their guitar playing draws from diverse musical styles including Appalachian folk, bluegrass, blues, flamenco, and classical guitar, as well as from folk iconoclasts John Fahey and Robbie Basho, figures of the 20th century avant-garde like Albert Ayler, Derek Bailey and Henry Flynt, and the musical traditions of India, Iran, and the Arab world. They have released music on Feeding Tube Records, Worried Songs, Scissor Tail Editions, AKTI, Island House, Blue Hole Recordings, Garden Portal, Reverb Worship / Future Grave, and their own Meliphonic Records imprint.

UK Subs

Demo Kicks

2.13.61

On June 16, 2025, I saw this UK Subs multi-track demo tape for sale on eBay, of all places. I got it and sent a photo of the front cover of the tape box, which informs the back cover of this 12” to Pete Davies to see what he might remember. He said it looked legit. I took the tape to Infrasonic Sound, a great studio in Nashville, Tennessee and asked engineer Pete Lyman if he could transfer the tape. Days later, he sent Ian MacKaye and I a rough mix of the session. I was stoked to hear that three of the four tracks were unreleased. I contacted Ian and suggested we take the tracks to Don Zientara’s Inner Ear Studios in Arlington, Virginia (where we made our first records decades ago) to mix them. On September 30 there we were with Don. Due to the tracks being so well recorded, and the band playing so incredibly, our first mix began to take shape very quickly. Part way into the session, Eddie Janney (Untouchables, Faith, Rites Of Spring, One Last Wish, Happy Go Licky, Skewbald) arrived to sit in and we had another Subs fan in attendance. Together, we finished mixing the last two tracks. We brought the mixes to Pete Lyman for mastering. I wrote Charlie and asked his permission to unleash the tracks and he said go ahead. So, here we are with three unreleased UK Subs tunes and a new mix of "Same Thing". Studio kicks,...

Koray, Erkin

Mechul: Singles & Rarities

Sublime Frequencies

***BACK IN PRINT!!! Erkin Koray and Sublime Frequencies are pleased to present this collection of rare tracks and lesser-heard singles. All tracks were recorded and released in Turkey between 1970-1977 and culled from Koray's personal vinyl collection. Includes exclusive photos and remastered audio."What more is there to say about Erkin Koray? An iconic guitar and songwriting genius. A voice of gold. Having founded the country's first-ever rock and roll group in 1957, he is regarded worldwide as the father of Turkish rock. Forging Western sounds with his own inimitable musical mastery, he self-produced singles and LPs throughout the 1960s and 1970s that shook and altered Turkish society. Erkin didn't stop at rock and roll. Over time, he began to find inspiration in folk sounds from Turkey's Anatolian interior, and radio broadcasts received from Egypt and Lebanon. He looked to the East from his West-leaning Istanbul perch, and began incorporating these sounds into his own work. This amalgamation was as unprecedented and unorthodox in Istanbul at the time as rock and roll itself had been in the 1950s. The resulting hybrid sound ignited what became known as the Arabesque music movement in Turkey—which continues to this day. While Erkin has recorded and performed tirelessly throughout the years (both as a solo artist, and with the powerful groups he formed), his extensive back catalog only began to be explored by the international community in the 1990s. He is now recognized as one of the foremost global leaders of psychedelic, folk rock, pop...

Bullseye

s/t

Ever / Never

***"Imagine if Gene Clark never made it to L.A. He never chased fast cars and rubbed elbows with guys who make organic massage tables and build hot tubs into the sides of redwoods. And he never got so wasted that his talent proved increasingly elusive. Instead, he held it together in the Midwest and made beer-sipping music for a bunch of ham-and-eggers who don’t know they’re about to hit the skids as the belt begins to rust. Bullseye conjures such a reality.The NYC-via-Minnesota quartet craft flawless, roots-tinged jangle-pop that recalls not only the aforementioned Clark and all the other Byrds, too, but a few other legendary 'B' bands: Big Star, Buffalo Springfield, Blue Ash, gBv. And while certainly not sonically aligned, let’s throw in the Beat Happening, at least as far as Bullseye’s similarly admirable commitment to a burgeoning new DIY-pop underground is concerned. There are some Anglo-isms here as well, but this is very much American music. Not Americana, mind you. There’s no mawkish nostalgia in the band’s twangy, hook-laden rock, even if they know who came before them.Repping a classic two-guitar/bass/drums line-up are Oliver, Clara, Humberto, and frontman and principal songwriter Jake Barczak. Yeah, Bullseye is Brooklyn-based, but songs like 'Dangers of the Heart' and 'Get Started' are for joy rides that take in both the Northern Lights and the Rio Grande. That’s the kind of expanse we’re talking about here.This 6-song self-titled release available on the superior 12-inch EP format is a testament to the idea that...

National Photo Committee

Red Hot Photo Committee

Ever / Never

***"Friction can be unwanted—the unintended clash of things not built to interact. It can also provide the grip necessary for energy and movement. Friction can abrade, but it can also propel. For Chicago quartet National Photo Committee, friction serves as both an irritant and a power source. First, there’s the frayed-denim baritone of singer/guitarist Maxwell Bottner, which resembles the wry drawl of David Berman channeled through the froggy gusto of Calvin Johnson. It’s not always a smooth process, that channeling. Collisions occur; bumps are hit; sparks fly. But the resulting dissonance carries a strange frisson, if you’ll pardon the French. Bottner’s dog-eared yet nimble vocals exude a longing that’s simultaneously innocent and jaded, ironic and earnest. Is he trying to fool us, or himself? Maybe he’s just delivering the kind of wisdom that you can’t reduce to a lesson —or offering up some foolishness we can learn from. Rollicking ballad 'The Bishop,' for instance, begins with a mystifying parable about a man turning into cheese (I think) and goes on to include cocky declarations like 'Love’s a sexy puzzle,' and 'I’m the devil’s best masseuse, and that’s a fact.' Bottner sings it all with fuck-it-bucket conviction but leaves a sneaking suspicion that he’s not entirely on the level...National Photo Committee is a Chicago band that sounds like they grew up in Virginia and got kicked out of college in Olympia. They have an unruly streak that suggests a strong DIY ethos and a ramshackle approach that doesn’t quite camouflage their...

Patois Counselors

Protection Racket

Ever / Never

***"As the sun goes down in the West, it is more than past due to acknowledge Patois Counselors as one of America’s greatest bands. Protection Racket is the fourth full-length for the Charlotte, North Carolina-based group, who are still riding the wave from 2024, when they put out Limited Sphere and the live-in-the-studio Enough: One Night At The Daisy Chain (all on Ever/Never, natch). On Protection Racket, the quintet—leader and singer Bo White, guitarist Lenny Muckle, bassist Robin Doermann, synthesist Krizia Torres and drummer Taylor Knox—are locked in tight, but they keep the screws loose so that the Southern breeze can waft in and provide some essential lift. Patois Counselors write songs for the twilight, to be played as day slips into night and the possibilities remain boundless, even if only for one magical hour. But what gives Patois Counselors their power is the way they contrast their romantic inclinations with a discerning eye that harshly analyzes and defuses the nonstop stupidity of society in2026."—Erick Bradshaw, Spin Age Blasters with Creamo Coyl on WFMU

Rikki G. Godd

Cost Of Living

Spectral Disc

***After a formative stint in the mythical sun of Los Angeles, Colin Blanton (Brin, casualshrine) returned to Chicago’s grey winters and suffocating summers in 2024, and he promptly set about creating a new persona that matched the muggy, claustrophobic, and paradoxically life-giving environment he found himself in. Recording under the name Rikki G. Godd, he applies the techniques he developed as an experimental percussionist to a quantized form of electronic music that seems to both hold the pressure of living in the city in highly contentious times and provides relief from them through the traditional release of dance music. The ugly industrial grind of Cost Of Living recalls the brick-scraping electronic music of Esplendor Geometrico, the righteous indignation of Muslimgauze, and the hyperkinetic shuddering of SHEET NOISE. This is dark music that is as distinctly Chicago; at times it feels equally brutal and rich, like coagulated blood scraped from Upton Sinclair’s abattoirs. But as with so much of the electronic music that's made Chicago famous, there's an obvious undercurrent of joy at work here, too, a form of transfiguration that can be read as a response to the viciousness if you like but that is completely inseparable from it. Put it on and dance in the showering sparks of a sputtering power plant on the bank of Lake Michigan.

M.U.T.T.

Toughest Street in Town

Stress Fracture

***The latest collection of M.U.T.T. rock music, Toughest Street in Town, was originally recorded in two separate sessions and previously only available digitally. The resulting full-length album is now available on vinyl, courtesy of Stress Fracture Records, a new Bay Area punk rock record label. Melding lean and mean, old school punk rock with the reckless, noisy abandon of early grunge and topped off with just enough melody to get stuck in your head, M.U.T.T. is exactly the kind of San Francisco punk band we need right now. Forming the band are the two guitarists and rhythm section of the defunct Culture Abuse band, with guitarist John Jr. taking lead vocal duties. The years of making music together have resulted in a tight unit, locked in and crushing, both live and on record. This is the real shit, recorded, mixed and mastered for vinyl by Jack Shirley (Atomic Garden). Art painstakingly assembled by John Jr. after depleting multiple cartridges of black ink at his local Kinkos. DIY still rules.Edition of 100 copies on black vinyl.

Itchy & The Nits

Greetings From...

Total Punk

***Itchy & The Nits could very well hold the distinction of being the world’s most charming band. They possess a friendship that one could only imagine exists in teen sitcoms of the 60’s and 70’s and Saturday morning cartoons. The world could collapse tomorrow (seems probable) and with the rest of us hysterically running around, hands to the heavens, The Nits would be gathered in some cave banging on rocks, strumming rubber bands and putting each other in stitches. They are the real deal 21st century Monkees.“Welcome to The Itchy & the Nits show / Dance like you’re at the disco” sings the chorus to the Nits’ second Theme Song, which opens their sophomore album. Greetings From... contains odes to Smelly Boys, swimming at the Nudie Beach, and watching television on a beautiful day; more songs about relationships and less songs about getting crabs. 'Cartoon' is littered with classic sound effects swiped from the songs source material, which feels perfectly at home amongst this setting. Even at their most introspective, on song such as 'Waiting Around' and 'Gimmie a Break', the sounds are more suited for the beach than the funeral parlour, and simplicity is still the order of the day. We don’t hear a guitar solo till album closer 'City Line', most of the songs are two to three chords, and the choruses are generally a group chant sure to stick in your skull and crack you up.Itchy & The Nits have spent the last two year’s honing their...

Hydromatics, The

The Earth Is Shaking

Bang

***For the first time on vinyl, Bang! Records brings you The Earth Is Shaking, the third album by The Hydromatics—a transatlantic high-energy rock and roll unit powered by Detroit legend Scott Morgan (The Rationals / Sonic's Rendezvous Band) and Amsterdam cult-hero Tony "Slug" Leeuwenburgh (Loveslug). Originally released in 2007, this record captures the band leaner, rougher and fully locked-in: big riffs, street-level groove, zero filler, and that unmistakable Detroit soul-grit that Morgan owns like nobody else. And here's the headline for rock and roll die-hards: Kent Steedman (The Celibate Rifles) is on guitar—bringing bite, melody and attitude, plus extra sonic spice (yes: theremin) and production muscle. The result is The Hydromatics at maximum voltage, moving confidently into their own songs while still carrying the Motor City flame. Highlights include the swaggering "Streets Of Amsterdam," the barroom punch of "Standin' At The Juke," and the epic ride of "Detroit Leaning."

Watson, David & Bill Nace

On Bats

Amish

***"Amish Records is pleased to announce the first recorded collaboration between David Watson and Bill Nace, entitled On Bats.Historically, ensembles combining taishōgoto and bagpipes (at least inside the milieu of “jazz”) have been on the tame side. The Winkler Twins, Dagnabbit, CUZ and other such units pandered to the bowtie set so exclusively that many people have all but dismissed the instruments as hopelessly moldy or even (in the words of critic Milo Fine) “tools of fascism and complacency.” That said, it is my pleasure to announce that the duo of William “Bill” Nace and Dave “David” Watson has made a mighty effort hereon to liberate these instruments from the yoke of yokelism.Nace is a Philadelphia-based wizard of avant-string tomfoolery with a recording history stretching back to Vampire Belt (with Chris Corsano) in the early Oughts. Watson is an NYC-based New Zealand ex-pat whose multi-instrumental genius was first evidenced with the Primitive Art Group in the '80s. Now, with On Bats, the pair have set out to right the wrongs of generations of the dull ass taishōgoto/bagpipes artists who preceded them.The taishōgoto is, of course, a Japanese stringed instrument perhaps best described as a cross between a zither and a typewriter. Bagpipes are...well...pipes with a bag attached. Using their respective instruments to create both long-form tones and berserk machine-like squeedles, Nace and Watson create a varied and surreal aural landscape that shifts contours and colors with ease. The way they combine voices here often manifests as a sonic analogy to...

Exhumation / Funeral Chant

Sacred Oath: Temple of Death

Carbonized

***The East and West converge like an electrical arch across the pillars of reality in this vile communion between the death pilgrims of Exhumation (IDN) and Funeral Chant (USA)! Sacred Oath: Temple of Death is a formulation of madness and zeal offered to all forces against causality. Exhumation’s side recorded, engineered, and mixed at Watchtower Studio, Yogyakarta, Indonesia by Bable Sagala. Funeral Chant’s side recorded, engineered, and mixed by Justin Divver in forbidden chambers. Sacred Oath: Temple of Death was mastered in full by James Plotkin (Blazar, Dispossessed, Sunn O)))).

Los Gaiteros De San Jacinto

En Vivo Desde Le Guess Who?

Electric Cowbell

***With more than 70 years of history, Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto are among the most influential traditional music ensembles in Latin America and are recognized as a Living Cultural Heritage of Colombia.En Vivo Desde Le Guess Who? captures the group performing live at the internationally celebrated festival in the Netherlands, presenting the powerful rhythms and ancestral spirit of gaita and cumbia from Colombia’s Montes de María region to an ecstatic European audience.This recording documents a rare and vibrant cultural exchange—traditional Caribbean music resonating on an international stage while remaining deeply rooted in centuries-old musical traditions.Pressed on limited blue vinyl.

Natural Child

Wooden

Natural Child Records and Tapes

***Wooden, Natural Child's 9th studio album continues to prove that they're still the last Rock n' Roll band in the world.

Miljoona, Pelle

Singles 1978-1981

PNV

***In the compilation series presenting Finnish punk singles, it is now the turn of the lively septuagenarian, Pelle Miljoona. Pelle was so prolific even at a young age that his singles from 1978 to 1981 already amounted to a double album's worth of material.Pelle's biggest hits, "Moottortiet," "Olen kauniit sun muut," also fall into this period. The CD version, also released as a double, goes even further and covers the years 1978-1989. Like the previous parts of the series, the double album will be released in collaboration with the American label PNV Records, which is why the extensive background material on the albums is in English.So I don't dream of world conquest, but Owl rules ok!The albums also have beautiful coloring, one vinyl is blue and the other is white, as befits a national hero!

King Bee

s/t

Doomtown

***More than 40 YEARS IN THE MAKING! Doomtown Sounds, in collaboration with Toody Cole and the surviving members of the band, is proud to present the release of the KING BEE album, containing a dozen unreleased studio and live songs recorded between 1977 and 1981. King Bee was Fred Cole's late 70's band, and their music occupied an important position in Fred's development as a songwriter. This often-overlooked part of Fred's career saw him combining elements of his 60's roots with this new sound called punk rock, and it was this synthesis of styles which led to the Rats, and, eventually, to the creation of Dead Moon.

Mebreku, Wesenyeleh

Resonance Of Time

Tone Poem

***Electronic lullabies and folk songs from Ethiopia! A landmark recording from Ethiopia’s vibrant cassette era of the 1980s, Resonance of Time features pioneering composer Wesenyeleh Mebreku reimagining Ethiopian folk melodies through the humble circuitry of an early Casiotone keyboard.

Cordyceps Corpse

From Flesh to Fluids

Gore House Productions

***Ohio’s one-woman force of sickness, Cordyceps Corpse, unleashes her debut full-length offering, From Flesh to Fluids. This record is a testament to the brutality of slamming brutal death metal, drenched in gore-soaked atmosphere and twisted groove. The album blends crushing riffs with punishing breakdowns that keep the music both groove-driven and extreme, while adding an undercurrent of goregrind filth.Influenced by legends like Devourment, Cephalotripsy, and Putrid Pile, Cordyceps Corpse pushes the boundaries of heaviness into grotesque new territory. The songwriting thrives on brutality but keeps each track memorable through relentless slamming passages and spine-snapping groove. Every song drips with raw energy, balancing primal savagery and grotesque atmosphere in equal measure. From Flesh to Fluids is a crushing debut that marks Cordyceps Corpse as a rising name in the underground of extreme music.

Insect Inside

Reborn in Blight

Gore House Productions

***Reborn In Blight marks Insect Inside's monumental return with a record that pushes their sound into even darker and more oppressive territories. The band delivers a symbiosis of groove-based slamming and cavernous Brutal Death Metal, forging a sonic landscape that is both guttural and unrelentingly.Drawing influence from Ulcerate, Relics Of Humanity, Cryptopsy, Defeated Sanity, and Vulvectomy, "Reborn In Blight" stands as the band's most mature and devastating release to date, cementing their status as one of Russia's most formidable forces in modern extreme metal.

Onchocerciasis Esophagogastroduodenoscopy

Fugue Gnawed from the Scabbed God Cerebrum

Stillbirth

***The international crew known as Onchocerciasis Esophagogastroduodenoscopy, return to deliver their latest grotesque masterstroke: Fugue Gnawed from the Scabbed God Cerebrum. The trio’s newest full-length is a meticulously sculpted slab of slamming, guttural, and brutal death metal soaked in an atmosphere of suffocating density and chaotic groove. Drawing influence from the likes of Last Days of Humanity, Disentomb, and Dehumanizing Itatrain Worship, the album twists precision with putrid sonic decay to form an unforgettable aural blitz.

Cheater Slicks

Live On WFMU / At Carabar

Almost Ready

***A-side features five songs the Cheater Slicks recorded live on Terre T's Cherry Blossom Clinic show on WMFU in 2004. B-side rips four more recorded at Carabar in 2006. Pressed on blue vinyl.