RECORD REVIEWS

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I "like" this post.

But seriously, I'm really into this. Honestly, since the pandemic and Termbo going offline, I've checked out from current music for the most part, besides sticking with some favorite bands who are still releasing stuff. Since this forum started, I've been way more interested in new music than I have in years and have found some stuff I really dig. Definitely interested in a space to discuss and review things a little more in-depth.

Won't be a writer but will be a reader! Great Idea!

Your suggestions are all good and conventional standards regarding music journalism -- although I think Lisa and Richard Robinson would blur the lines.

My suggestion would be to take it further. A quarterly or biannually collection in print (newsprint or zine-style layout). Something to sell online or at Goner. What you had mentioned about the superficiality of social media regarding actual reader engagement is a good one. While Rich was doing God's work at Termbo, a lot of that online material is now lost. I saved all of the interviews I did for the site, but I've also had zines cease publication and left me with interviews. For better or worse, print is permanent and that's why I'm still releasing records. You need a physical document. A collection of relatively current independent releases, free from PR influence, and a couple of long-format interviews.

If this is something you're interested in doing via Total Punk, awesome. I'll help. If this is more than you can handle -- and I'm not going to make a suggestion and not be able to walk the walk, we can lay it out and publish it. If someone else, specifically someone who's got some background in zines wants to do it, go for it. This will be a money-losing venture.

I've been doing this for 20 years too and I've seen the situation worsen. I'm tired of it. That's just my two cents.

i despise instagram posts as you're mentioning so i'm definitely in favor of the sentiment. MRR does review stuff somewhat regularly still (i only write on the year end lists) and remains a good model for the format as well. I'd certainly welcome reading more edited/intentional posts about new music as it does really help me click that play button!

kai I like MRR. The only interview I did for them (Drew from Sick Thoughts) landed the cover, so I thought I'd stop while I was ahead. Mitch Cardwell was/is reliable, knowledgeable and consistent. And they effectively review all submissions.

Correct if I'm wrong, don't they have a proviso that record reviewers live in the Bay Area?

Ryan Leach

The Bay Area limitation fell away after the print edition ended. I do reviews for MRR & live in Portland; we've got current reviewers all over the US, in South America, Europe, the UK, etc.

Got it.

Layla Gibbon and Mitch were the people hitting it out of the park when I got the print mag. Not to slight anyone else -- there were/are talented people there -- but they were Forced Exposure-level contributors.

Also, not directed to any comments here specifically, but MRR is always open to bringing in new reviewers & we've put out multiple calls for fresh voices over the last few years, so if anyone is unsatisfied with the current state of MRR reviews & actually wants to contribute, feel free to email reviews@maximumrocknroll.com to get info on coming on as a reviewer. MRR is what people make of it; keeping a completely free, volunteer-run resource for punk reviews with zero PR sway pulling the strings takes a lot more behind-the-scenes work than I think a lot of people truly understand.

I think most of us know how hard and costly it is -- I could've bought a new Honda Civic after 14 years of losses in the "record biz" and I was on staff at Razorcake and then Termbo for most of my adult life. Packing mags, editing, transcribing for others, going for 501(c) status, etc. I actually know about the Bay Area stipulation cuz I used to exchange emails with Mitch. When the other zine I contributed to started changing direction and Roctober went out, I hit him up -- could've been someone else -- about reviewing for MRR to keep abreast of what was coming in. That's good they've changed policy. I agree with you -- most people outside of this forum have no idea what goes into keeping MRR and other zines afloat. It's a thankless grind.

I would like to see a print zine again. Even if it's an early '76-style zine of a few pages.

Would contribute. I like music and enjoy oppressing readers.

Randall Just sent you a message.

I'm not much of a writer, but I'd gladly contribute illustration and graphic design work!

When MRR’s monthly print life ended, I thought / hoped an annual “Year In Punk” edition would inevitably appear.

Seems fitting to start with a recent Total Punk review (I write these to get 'em in the general playbox at the college radio station):

The Circulators - Insufficient Fun

In the liner notes of a reissue of The Real Kids’ debut LP, the author reflects that “life then was–still is–a kinda aimless search for a thrill, and that thrill was, goofy as it sounds, rock n’ roll.” Indeed: boredom, apathy, tedium and ennui are universal problems, and rock ‘n’ roll offers a universal solution, alchemizing listlessness into restlessness into cheap guitars on Facebook Marketplace into raucous bursts of blood-pumping ruckus that, for a couple minutes at a time, allow us to lose ourselves in our own animal exuberance and forget that we’ve ever felt dead inside. In this sense, the title of San Francisco-based The Circulators’ debut LP poses the fundamental problem–“Insufficient Fun”--and the tracks themselves present the fuck-it-let’s-just-roll-a-ball-of-flames-down-a-hill solution. “Come on baby, let’s go on the loose,” the first track commands, and the wide-open, way-out rumpus doesn’t stop until the album suddenly ends 30-ish minutes later. “I wanna see you every day, I’m hung on every word you say!” the vocalist cries to his paramour on “Wired Over You”; it’s not entirely clear whether this is the same lover who ends up in jail for stealing catalytic converters on the second track (“Catalytic Converter”), but I like to think that it is. If boredom is a dreary descent down the slope towards the x/death-axis, and thrills are the opposite of boredom, then according to my calculations, the most life-affirming cris de coeur are the ones that maximize recklessness, mixing excitement and danger and fun in a bottle and shaking it up to spark a chemical reaction that intensifies the effects of all three ingredients. I mean, yeah, sure, you might end up in jail. And jail definitely sucks and is boring. But that’s OK, because when you finally get released, we’ve got a solution for that.

Might as well post this, too:

Sex Mex - Goes to Hell! EP

Within minutes of my first listen to the maniacal lo-fi bubblegum punk frenzy of Sex Mex’s last full-length album, “Sex Mex ‘23,” I was already thinking, “Holy hell, this rips, I can’t wait until 'Sex Mex '24’ comes out!” Sadly, I’m still waiting for that, but Clark Gray–for whom Sex Mex is essentially a solo project with a touring band–still bristles with creative restlessness, having unleashed a scattershot smorgasbord of budget punk scorchers. And the agitation has only amplified: On this EP, the guitars are not merely “fuzzy”; they’re overdriven and mammothed-up into a blistering hairiness that bounces and bops with the same rabid pop hookery that has become Sex Mex’s signature treat, but with more spleen and snarl than ever before. “If you wanna rake in the dough / just gentrify some rock and roll,” he trash-talks on “Pretty Boy,” lambasting what he sees as lucre-seeking charlatans who water down the genre, diluting the danger right out of it. I have no idea how much money Sex Mex makes themselves, although I’d imagine that, at best (worst?), they’ve achieved that storied income bracket where you’re too “wealthy” to qualify for a SNAP card, but too poor to pay the electricity bill this month because your van blew a tire, and you ended up having to pay for a whole new set because the remaining three were as smooth and bald as a dolphin’s skin. But I say: let the pretty boys have their soulless McMansions. We're all gonna die anyway, and those losers don’t even know they're only halfway alive.

Vague Fugue - "ST EP CS"

Would you like to join me in attaining acute glue-sniffing psychosis while listening to Hawkwind’s “Space Ritual” in an abandoned slaughterhouse full of bent cigarette butts, dried-up phosphorescent alien snot, and malfunctioning synthetic human parts and accessories? If your answer is “no,” then I’m afraid we can’t be friends anymore, but if the answer is “yes,” then by all means, let’s spend some quality time together with the howling cyborg punk phantasmagoria that is Vague Fugue’s first release “ST EP CS.” If this doesn’t sound like a good time to you, well, let me assure you: it is. From the first moments of “Enya Gotti DeVito,” when you’re brain-slapped with a shattering guitar twang and an echo chamber shout with a sinisterly grooving bassline slithering beneath it all, you know you’re in for some top-tier weirdo punk party spazzery. “Weird punk.” Is that the genre? There are no discernible synths to be heard here–just shredding eruptions of warped-out effect pedal necromancy–but it does remind me of a music education presentation I once did for a college radio station titled, “Chromosome Damage: Towards a Chronology of Weird Punk (A Deranged Intersectional Tendency).” In it, I posited that, dystopian themes notwithstanding, those bands that have blended (blendered?) robots with rock ‘n’ roll have found exuberance, even ecstatic exuberance, in spite of–or maybe because of–the grimy sci-fi hallucination that is their preferred habitat. “ST EP CS” supports my thesis: the hooks are as catchy as the psych-mare is bleak. The fever dreams of an angry ghost trapped in a magnetic hard drive have never been so fun.

I feel that all the music “breakdown” posts have been great for showing group analysis.

Reviews can be special. I have a backlog but the most current one I got is a blurb for The Puke: “…like a sawmill overrun by gleeful children!” It made the sole remaining member of the band and the guys at Get Hip happy. I accept advance records and tapes, CD, books… whatall. fauxwoodpaneling [dot] com has my PO Box.

WANTLIST of things to review/rave up/notlikelybeletdownby/wouldthankiffound:

Stay The Same Never Change from Laurel Nakadate… film (hard to find)
Girl Juice by Ritah Parrish… book (ditto)

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I remember Dusted magazine had a writer who would review rekkids and then at the end had a short section called “the friend zone” that listed his pals releases. I liked that. Kind of a sanctified nepo-action.

BloodstainsAcrossMantovani yesterday's kids is such a great cut

Half A Million - Song Above The Land- A Compilation For Palestine

“Who'll hand-feed a Zionist with a spoon?
And kick the Palestinians to the moon?”
-Sun City Girls, “CIA Man”

“Who the hell makes those missiles?
When they know what they can do…”
-The Sound, “Missiles”

There is an episode of a PBS documentary (…stop yawning!) called Carrier where some fighter pilots are asked about their role in the Middle East. They are dutiful and faithful to their country and that is reflected well in their responses. Alex Dietrich, former officer, UFO observer and current Lockheed Martin employee: “I can’t really get my mind around -the terror and the terrorists and -and -who they are and why they are… terrorizing us. So, uh, I don’t think about it a lot. I leave that up to… the politicians.”

Navy days. I went to sea and watched the jets launch from the USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN (CVN 72), passing the horizon line only to return some time later knowing that they had made routine bombing runs. However- here’s one personal remembrance -a pilot circa 2012 landed after what must have seemed like a typical day, only to be informed that (by no fault of their own) Marines had accidentally set bombing coordinates on THEMSELVES, thereby enduring “friendly fire”— obliteration, barring some survivors. So this officer got that SHELLSHOCK and later flew the coop, ostensibly to resign. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it here again: I wish people could feel this through osmosis. This wasn’t little insects being snuffed out, but human beings.

These aren’t half a million “fish in a barrel” either, but that’s closer. Seeing the decimation of Gaza has brought tears to my eyes in the middle of the night when I usually can’t or won’t cry for nothin’. The world won’t listen, the world is mad… when I’m not sad, I’m angry, and it makes me wish for cancer of the prostate to flare up inside Netanyahoo again, and at triple-time. But what a worthless consolation that would be. Isn’t he just a hologram anyway? And for those that’ll bring up hostages and first blood and all that- the right to defense? How about a “strategy” other than razing The Strip?

This Bandcamp release, Half A Million - Song Above The Land - A Compilation For Palestine… it proves that I’m not alone. Proceeds go to The Gaza Soup Kitchen purportedly, and I believe it. But mostly I got it cuz Holt (Mordecai) and Miranda (Spatulas) are among the many who submitted some music here that supports the culinary arts.

Still ambivalent to sounds or writs of shared anguish addressing urgent topics such as total war? I’ll say that even though this wasn’t called Avant-Garage Spillage, Scrape and Howl ’25, it’s really a more nebulous collection than you might think, a good one to parse and maybe dub to a tape. And it may even be tax deductible. Get. -W

I took on this exercise thinking it may get my reviewin' mojo back. It's kinda working, I think. Parts 1 and 2 up. Part 3 sometime this Monday.

https://clangoring.substack.com/p/listening-to-one-full-album-ive-never

Robert Rental, Mental Detentions, Double LP
For several years, I’ve frequently thought about and listened to the music of Robert Rental (1952-1980). His career was brief, spanning the years 1978-1980. What’s intriguing about Rental is not only the caliber of his releases—that span the gamut from self-dubbed C-90 cassettes to a single on Mute Records—but the outsized influence his small catalog maintains. Chris & Cosey were introduced to the Wasp synthesizer via Rental and his collaborator, Thomas Leer. There were other (anti-)musicians working in a similar vein, notably Daniel Miller who collaborated with Rental in The Normal (1979). But in terms of taking electronic experimental music that Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Schaffer had started decades earlier into the home-recording studio, Rental was a pioneer.
Mental Detentions was originally self-released on cassette in 1979. According to Dark Entries, Rental used a kid’s Stylophone keyboard, an Electro-Harmonix Doctor Q pedal and a Roland drum machine on the album. I believe it. There’s an immediacy to Mental Detentions; it sounds like the same person performing the music is also recording it. From what I’ve read about Rental, this was his preferred method of recording. Of course, this differed from his outstanding “Double Heart” (1980) Mute 45, Rental’s final release that was professionally recorded and features Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft’s Robert Goerl on drums. It’s likely that Rental preferred DIY recordings because his music was too experimental for punk. (I’m from Los Angeles; Robert Rental would’ve been at home with LAFMS.) At times, Mental Detentions sounds like a home-recorded Tangerine Dream movie soundtrack (think Kamikaze ’89, 1982), other times a forerunner to Negativland. Again, it was Rental who was taking this music out of university music labs and avant-garde institutes and into the bedroom. This aspect coupled with the excellence of his slim output is why Robert Rental takes up a lot of my time. To this day, there isn’t much biographical information available on Rental, outside of a brief sketch: Born in Port Glasgow, Scotland, friend to Thomas Leer, signed to Industrial Records…you get the picture. This only further adds to the mystery: How did Rental come up with his ideas? What would he have done had he continued making music? “I can’t see him sticking to the Yamaha DX7’s presets at all.”
Anything Robert Rental-related is worth picking up. For decades, Mental Detentions was effectively unobtainium. Highly recommended. -Ryan Leach (Dark Entries)

Ryan Leach Thomas Leer - 4 Movements is pretty good and I got the Private Plane single.

Wade T Oberlin Thomas Leer is wonderful. Robert Rental has been the biggest influence on me for the past several years. I've listened to his work for hours and hours. There isn't much of it, as you know.

@"Ryan Leach"

What a great write up on an under appreciated artist of the British diy/minimal synth era. His name is one that you don’t hear nearly enough when discussing music of that era and style. Don’t hear enough about Snowy Red either but I digress, Mental Detentions is a great album.

Ryan Leach i downloaded that Rental disc to check out and it is great. tha is for the wrote up. I was listening to it in the car with my 12 year old and he said "Both Ends Meet" sounded like a space movie. He didn't like all the " Squiggly Noises" at the end of Colourblind. I just ordered a copy from Dark Entries. thanks again

Clif Thanks. My son is 5 1/2 months old and we listened to this record all yesterday and today. He has a little Fisher Price keyboard that he bangs with his feet while it plays. It's been rough, this last year and we're going to have to move out of Austin, TX, for a number of reasons. So, it's a joy to witness. Kids are great. I didn't become a dad until 42, but I'm glad to be one.

"Stuck" is one of my favorite tracks on the record.

Wade T Oberlin … I also discovered thee Palestine Solidarity Compilation (https://palestinesolidaritycompilation.bandcamp.com/album/palestine-solidarity-compilation). Thing is, that was a tape that is loooong sold out. Too bad- but it’s still up and listenable.

Still, I’d consider purchasing/donating via HALF A MILLION since it was posted a mere week ago.

Thanks.

Wade T Oberlin

Ryan Leach Both sides of that Carol record are amazing, but yeah, So Low is something else. Too bad she didn't do anything else.

Alien Point Of View That Sylvia LP (1982) with Tommi Stumpff is another monster.

Ryan Leach I hadn’t heard this before! Sometimes I’m thankful for YouTube. This is really good, thanks for hipping me to it.

Ryan Leach Alien Point Of View That Sylvia LP (1982) with Tommi Stumpff is another monster.

Discovered the Silvia album via the reissue on Dark Entries. Huge favourite around here.

I recommend the one and only Baard single, by far the best Swedish minimal wave 7". Alexander Bard, the man behind the moniker, went on to international stardom with Euro-disco act Army of Lovers.

Gimmie Sopor Baard single is great. I hadn't heard it before.

I can speak a little German so I'm always scouring for West or East German post punk. Some of the GDR stuff is 10/10. The Sylvia record is awesome. I like Ronny a lot. She was French and was part of that Rusty Egan/Blitz club scene.

Stephan Eicher's Spielt Noise Boys EP is so good.