Hot off the presses, a debut cassette from Montreal, Quebec. WAYS OF HIDING offer up 5 songs of spacey, atmospheric, dreamy, meandering post-punk. These songs are not for the short attention spanned, however, with songs averaging around 4 minutes each. I was in the midst of writing about how the incredibly raw recording was a very interesting and unexpected touch coming from a band of this style. Then I had the realization that the tapes are just dubbed incredibly lo-fi and at a slower pace than the songs are when… …READ MORE

Third cassette release by Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s NECRON 9, all of which were released on the bands own label Unlawful Assembly. Absolutely relentless, no bullshit hardcore-punk. This tape was ‘recorded live in 3 hours on 4-trak machine’ as per the liner notes. Actually, aside from the band name, the release title, the band credits, and the catalog number those are the only other words on the entire layout. This tape sounds absolutely perfect. So wonderfully grimy and fucked up. This is exactly how this style of hardcore-punk should be recorded and… …READ MORE

THE DUMPSTERS – ‘Waste Management’ cassette Lo-fi, distorted, fucked-up garbage punk. With the bands schtick being that of trash, and having seen them play live while all wearing garbage bags, it is unsurprising that this cassette sounds like it was recorded IN a damn dumpster. Angry mid-tempo riffs plod along while the singer, who is just credited as Garbage, can audibly be heard developing throat polyps, straining his voice like he’s screaming through Jimmy Hart’s megaphone. 5 songs, each as stupid as the last. I see that Painter’s Tapes put… …READ MORE

T.T.T.T. from Buffalo, NY plays out around town fairly regularly. I have seen them with different iterations of band members, and as a solo acoustic act by the brainchild of the group, Jacob King. It’s not unlike how John Dwyer would use THEE OH SEES moniker for full band stuff as well as solo releases for a while. Does he still do it that way? I haven’t been keeping up. This is a two-song cassingle and all music is played and recorded entirely by Jacob King. From first strum it… …READ MORE

Five tracks of lo-fi, pissed-off, no frills, fast hardcore-punk from Providence, Rhode Island. Sure, it’s nothing remarkable…yeah, yeah, it’s not reinventing the wheel or anything like that…but IMPULSE in incredibly tight and this tape is not fucking boring, which is something that can’t be said of a lot of bands that try too hard to be original. Insert printed lightly on paper that looks like it’s been soaking in some sort of grease is a strange choice. Gotta hold it up to the light to faintly make out the words.… …READ MORE

Minimalist kooky artsy synth music from Kalamazoo, MI. A three-piece band consisting of two members of SILICON HEARTBEAT (including the brains behind that project when it was still a solo endeavor) and Ben Lyon who is probably most known for his incredible artwork but is also the vocalist in Kalamazoo outsider punk project LOSER CANDY. Weird, discordant, uneasy, repetitive songs consisting of only synths, drum machine, vocals, and aux percussion instruments. Very cool and strange. It’s like the artistic bigger brother to the juvenile SILICON HEARTBEAT. Sure it might come… …READ MORE

Novelty one-man-band project from Buffalo, NY. Lo-fi recording, but in a rather endearing way, even if it means I can’t be 100% sure what instruments I am listening to. All songs have cool simplistic synth following along with the rhythm guitar…or wait, is that the tone OF the rhythm guitar? I’m truly not sure, and therein lies the charm of the lo-fi recording. With songs about how Easter is a feeding ground holiday for the reincarnation of zombie Jesus, and a titular wiener dog attacking your face, it would be… …READ MORE

DIZZY DAVIS is the side-project and alter-ego of Radiana Basso from LEOPARDO. In case you’re somehow unfamiliar, allow me to assist you with that. Based in Switzerland, LEOPARDO has released multiple records on different labels, most notably on Feel-It Records, and are a modern garage/psych powerhouse. DIZZY DAVIS seems to share a lot of the players from LEOPARDO as backing band members and I have seen that they did a Euro tour together coinciding with the release of this cassette and the most recent LEOPARDO LP, both on Swiss based… …READ MORE

An Australian solo-project with a near unbelievable amount of output since 2020. Synth heavy, kooky, bonkers, egg-punk mayhem. Steakhead Breakbeats is a collection of BILLIAM tracks from other sessions that never materialized for one reason or another. Though it’s a collection, as a whole this tape does a killer job of mixing the wildly demented with the extraordinarily catchy and even ends with an unexpected LESLEY GORE ‘It’s My Party’ cover. The experience is made to feel all the more unhinged considering the wildly piss-poor dub job on this cassette.… …READ MORE