Multiple Man-Guilt Culture 7" EP (Detonic, 2014)

Multiple Man ditches the clangy bangy garage funk on their second EP, and goes straight for dance-punk so cold it'll freeze your innards in July. The eponymous first track starts with a beat pretty close to the Vaselines' "You Think You're a Man", but it's far more frigid than those Scottish tricksters were. DIstance, coldness, and other vaguely displeasing emotional states are what come to mind on all three of these tracks.

MM has clarified and distilled the squalling misery they hinted at on their debut, leaving us with dance tunes that don't feel remotely pleasureable. That's intended as a compliment; really. C'mon, unless you're going to soul night at your local bar, who wants to feel warm and cuddly anyways, right? Right. Anyway "Guilt Culture" drones on in a numbly danceable key. "Boiling Down" could easily be mistaken for a lost track from some Liege or Innsbruck Cold Wave group ca. 1984. It has all the stylistic marks of Cold Wave pizzazz: a repetitive, bouncy bass line; layers of synth that run the gamut from hissing to damn-near-rhythmic; and an absolute refusal to deal in human emotions. It's all dead ends and frayed synapses stuck somewhere in an ice cavern. "Youth Forever," by comparison, is damn near upbeat. In fact, it's pretty fuckin' close to lo-fi Aussie rock's answer to Montreal's Grimes.  I was snorting drugs the other night and my partners in crime thought it was a fuckin' booty-shakin' hit! Then they started throwing beer cans at me, but that's another story.....

This story currently involves you going over to the Detonic Records bandcamp to listen to and purchase this three-track bit of Friday night soul shakin', soul-crushing hissrattle.

Multiple Man-s/t CS (Major Crimes Records, 2013)

Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are that I crawled out of an alcoholic slumber to start posting rad new shit but there ya go....

....and the "there," as is often the case these days, is Brisbane, Australia. Multiple Man is twins Sean & Chris Campion and they deliver the goods with five tracks of weirdo, minimal synth fuckery. "Built Wrong" is a slow-burning bit of persistent, almost-menacing goof-goth with percussion that sounds like someone kicking a piece of aluminum siding with steel-toed Docs. Things get nastier with "Photo Arrays," which shortens the beat to autistic levels while ramping up the distortion. It sounds like how you feel after a night of drinking 15 light beers and wrecking your bike while out on the town. That good.
"Typecast" is the best track here, and could easily have crawled out of some Viennese synth-geek's lair circa 1984. Clean, crisp, automated ambiance washes over a hysterical rhythm and mindless, monotone vocal tracks. It creates the illusion that the Iron Curtain is still just across the Danube and it's always raining so fuck it gimme another beer and turn up that bootleg of live Joy Div you just smuggled in from France. 

The next two tracks are just as good but I don't wanna ruin the fun for you fuckers (clue: settle in with downers and whiskey for "Whipping Boy"). Those of you who enjoy the benefits of the European welfare state are just getting back from summer holidays. This is the perfect piece of cold, fuzz-fucked minimalism to usher in fall and yet "another year with nuthin' to do," as Iggy Stooge said so majestically in 1969.

Listen to Multiple Man HERE or HERE. Major Crimes is sold out of the cassettes, but email Matt over at Eternal Soundcheck Distro and he might still have copies kicking around.

Broken Cups-Slaves of the Grave LP (2012)

One of the best books I read as a teenager was Don DeGrazia's American Skin. Set on Chicago's North Side during the mid-80s, it's about a bourgeois suburban boy who runs away to the city, becomes a skinhead, and spends his formative years fighting it out in the vicious turf wars of the era between Nazi and anti-nazi skinhead gangs. When they're not bashing fascist heads in the gutter, Alex & his friends are working door at the infamous Chicago club Medusa's, home of proto-industrial Wax Trax acts, synthpunk, etc.

Broken Cups woulda fit in quite well on that scene. The band consists of a drummer who sounds like a drum machine, a guitarist specializing in minimal, Gang of Four-style riffing, and manic vocalist who either yowls like the singer for Scratch Acid or croons it like Dracula.  "Slaves" is 80s worship down cold: dehumanized beat, pulsing guitar notes on the riff, with the singer howling on the riff about bein' a slave. Spooky.

Most of the songs on the album are a variant on this, moving from from mid-tempo tunes you could dance to ("The Burnout", "She Thinks of Death") to speeded up robot punk ("Bank of Souls"). Although they hail from Budapest, they'd fit in quite well on a bill with American gloomrockers like Chicago's Population or Oakland's Branes.

Download and buy the LP here. Check out a video for "Flesh" here.

Soft Drinks-Pop Stars in Their Pyjamas EP (1981)

Lots of people think that "anarchopunk" always and everywhere has consisted of a bunch of black-clad idiots twisting stupid noise out of their instruments, while just barely avoiding alcohol poisoning.
       A lot of people forget, however, the weirdo end of the early '80s anarchopunk scene. Rudimentary Peni spearheaded the "we're into reading Bakunin but also getting destroyed on acid and vodka" end of the Crass scene, and this 2-song 7" is a product of RP's drummer and a few other freaks who happened to know Nick Blinko.
The only thing I can really compare this to is Sleeping Dogs: retarded, synthesizer-based music somewhere between ranting synthwave and electronic punk. Dig it or not, it's certainly an oddball gem.

So erotic..... Check EBay for this, but I'm guessing there's like 200 copies worldwide. If you wanna know more about Rudimentary Peni, check this out.

Carol-Breakdown 7" (1981)

Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances arising from a real humdinger of a Monday night, your humble narrator is feeling about as garrulous as a bog toad on bad acid.
 To accompany my null-node nebbishness, I present you with a 2-song synth EP, with vocals from some Belgian girl Carol.
 There's a scene in that awful movie, Fellowship of the Ring, where Galadriel becomes a she-Sauron before Frodo's hobbity eyes-this 7" might be the perfect accompaniment to a she-Sauron's snow castle. Crystalline, sparkling, Belgian-what's not to love, right?

...had a heart of glass....

Sorry kiddies, no clue where you could buy this thing. But Minimal Wave Records has a whole buncha sweet, like-minded gems to whet your whistle while you're suckin' down your poison.