ZING!

UK:

Henry Monkey’s Zine Distro
Charlie Hewitt’s Zine Distro
Your buddy’s bathroom floor

EU:
Lammy – Don’t Buy Records

US:

Pacific Northwest:

Portland, OR : Shane – A Network of friends shop (1927 SE Morrison)

Atlantic Seaboard:

Richmond, VA: Sam: Feel It Records
Charlotte, NC: Daniel: Sorry State Records

Australia:

DX has a couple; get at him.

Wait. Who are you and why I am here? We went to Chaos in Tejas. Summary: Bullet-belt Butlins in an Oven. Undoubtedly the warmest I’ve ever been. The British will not be cooked in this way without consequences. Not only did I miss all the good aftershows due to being so completely exhausted from the strenuousness of just being awake in the heat, but poor Ellis fainted on the bus – so dehydrated and full of stale booze that his eyes went black and his face went white. (No dramatisation there, that’s exactly how it was.) It was a bizarre moment of total horror where the only thing you can think is ‘Please don’t die’ and ‘Why don’t I know first aid?’, compounded due to the fact that we were riding the airport shuttle on the first day, so literally most of hardcore witnessed his collapse. I am not very good at fests at the best of times (read: missing Arctic Flowers and Waste Management) I’m prone to social awkwardness, I hate crowds, I like sitting down, and sadly all too often these sorts of concentrated events seem to serve chiefly to remind me that no, wearing the shirt of a band I like doesn’t stop someone from being a towering apex of moronity (welcome to obvious-town, I know.) As such, I will leave the band-by-band review to other columnists that will I’ve no doubt cover it off with a flourish far more illustrious than I’m capable of. Instead; a few paradigmatic observations. On the second day, I walked past a young man who caught my stunned attention for a few horrorstruck moments, being, as he was, the ergh, bodily proprietor of an odour so consuming, so advanced, so acrid as to defy its own description, other than to say that he smelt not of sweat or piss, but of a kind of human vinegar. Seriously, what makes a punk start fermenting? My eyes actually watered. Sure, screw the system and don’t be oppressed, but also have fun wanking alone. Forever. On another equally harrowing tip, being Jerry A. in 2010 must be a sad and lonely predicament, I would have fronted that scab shitty-oake better than him and I’m a five foot six and Welsh. I did have great fun though, saw a shitload of bats and neon signs (I am big into neon signs) I might go again, and I now know the brilliance of three things I did not before: Nerveskade, the Rival Mob (I have sorely missed the obnoxiousness of the better breed of Lockin’ out bands as a presence in hardcore over the last few years) and a good set of earplugs. Oh, and that sometimes its easier to just suck it up and ask for ‘wah-deurgh’ instead of ‘waught-ah.’

Back to my jaunt in the Yay Area, then, and somewhere in the background there’s the small matter of conning my postgrad assessors at university into believing that hanging out in a punk rock reality TV pilot (in the absolute best possible way) for a month somehow constitutes the participant observation research into volunteer-run cultural production (or something to that effect) that I promised to return to the UK with. I know, call me Lux Ulterior, right? As much as I play it down, a little embarrassed at what some would term ‘backyard research,’ it’s better than the other option of letting some goose pick me a shitty internship where I might not be able to listen to records all day and hang out, right? Anyway, it worked out pretty well because the cumulative amount of graft witnessed in just a few days has literally blown my tiny mind. Some cheesy ‘oh how laudable’ sentiment is not what i’m aiming for, maybe admiration on a level its hard to vocalise, either way to see all this and live here even temporarily definitely raises interesting questions about what it really means to make your life about your culture. I’d wager few people outside the Bay Area are aware of how much work goes into MRR. So far, all there is to report is a an open-mouthed staring at super human levels of what-we-do-is-secret stalwart organisational brilliance, the likes of which in the world of paid work would warrant a six figure salary and a team of secretaries, but cuz this is punk is undertaken by get-it-done saints in between shifts waiting tables, selling books and every other manner of work required to make living money. ‘Noone recieves any salary’ is printed in every issue of MRR, but when you think about what that actually entails its pretty wild. How many hours are in your working day? For now let’s just say inky fingers are the final link in a very long chain, so moan all you like but the product of hundreds and hundreds of hours worth of activity every month continues to come out. Of course all this is not (normally) part of the narrative within these pages, because its quite rightly more concerned with covering the punk rock instead, but, as the youth say, I’m just sayin’.

One other thing; Total Abuse, the internet, European tour, ah blah blah blah memes lolcats what? I guess I set up a London gig then realised I’d be here in SF on the date, leaving it in the hands of some friends who have, in my absence, stepped up in a major way and responded with ingenuity to the ailing clusterfuck that the tour suddenly became, as ever mediated by the bizarre spiralling torture of messageboard politics. As a point of principle their whole situation can stay away from my brain as I genuinely can’t get a handle on it, or at least I keep going back and forth, still missing the solution thats probably somewhere between righteous DIY you-asked-for-it bro and flagrant ‘fuck you i’m pissing out ya window’ bro – but screw it. On a wider level though, it seems that cultural differences re: way that punk gets done across the world is a tension point par excellence more than ever. There’s more ins and out than swiss cheese on this subject, but summarily, if you’re going to play even a single gig outside your own town or social circle, acceptance that hey, you’re not Elvis, has gotta be top of the list, and the one thing to pack along with condoms and sunglasses is a massive, ultra-absorbent bumper pack of humility and perspective. Good gosh, reality breakdown. For example, having recently had to tease an apology from another apparently tantrum-prone US band after being not-that-indirectly called a ‘fucking asshole’ from the stage for not being able to provide a third back-up guitar head, I got to thinking about all this. Of course, they’d only be band number infinity to be faced with the sour realisation that band-owned backline and gear is sparse at best and non-existant at worst in the UK, so yes, we have to share, and that thems the shitty, shitty breaks. The apology-mitigating argument was that, by letting support bands use equipment the touring bad had paid to hire, said band were being forced to work harder, longer hours as individuals on their return home….. Dubious logic, perhaps, for those who would view overseas tours as more of a paid holiday than a bitter lesson in knife-edge bad economics, after all punk gigs don’t stand up to business principles, duh… but the real juggle of these times is how to reconcile plowing the ‘fuck you’ furrow of stylistic nihilism that is somewhat de rigeur in today’s most popular brands of punk, whilst, as is the nature of touring, relying completely on the hospitality and kindness of your hosts as well as the deep pockets of those that will pay in to see you. For my money, even if it cracks your mystique (and at this point, even having one is at best a well-worn schtick and at worst, over exposed and frankly tired, and I mean this re: all ‘privileged enough to care about nothing’ hardcore) if you can start out by just consciously trying not to be a dick, you can relax from a position of strength, don those shades, and maybe even play some tunes!

As well as the extended tour story, the zine includes all the usual incoherent guff, a couple of reviews, some light baiting, and interviews with Houston’s leather disciples NO TALK and Bostonian snarlers FOREIGN OBJECTS. The first chunk of zines sold come with a screened canvas patch so you can wear your failure art affiliations proudly. Colour is potluck unless you have a really strong preference. Ordering info below.

You can pay via paypal – bryonybeynon@gmail.com or well concealed cash, SAEs etc are good too. If you send letters you get nice things.

IN PERSON  – £1

POSTED IN THE UK – £2

POSTED TO EUROPE – €3.00

POSTED TO THE US – $4.00

Elsewhere is good, just email first!
Distro would be nice, too. Email with any queries – bryonybeynon@gmail.com

And then the incredible OUT OF THE BLUE with my new teen child crush Linda Manz (perhaps only comparable in odd beauty pre-treen shit-kicking androdge awesomeness to Natalie Portman in Leon). Manz was also saving grace of earlier work the Wanderers (as the leader of the female auxilliary of the Baldies gang – who incongruously snogs a dude that looks like Buster Bloodvessell from Bad Manners)

Not that controversial, but I’m pretty into people having opinions. Like, proper ones. I think debate, lively discussion, and disagreement is bloody super. I reckon it’s productive, stimulating is as exciting and as enriching, if not moreso, than the buzzy feeling of totally agreeing with someone. I’m talking about spats away from the easy drama of the messageboard. I’ve been reading old issues of MRR and a bunch of accounts of this rag’s legendary status as opinion former/breaker/battleground. Theres a nice full circle, then, in resurrecting that difficult tradition and giving some people an extended right-to-reply in this here column..

Not that many UK bands are featured in MRR, but not that many UK bands are any good. Mob Rules are based in Leeds, England, and play great, thunderous, heavily dynamic hardcore, but you might not have got that from their recent interview, a platform as it was, for some of their more esoteric channels of verbal witticism. Conor, the drummer, is a funny man. He and I have disagreed, in the aforementioned manner, a few times before, as anyone who remembers the last time he said ‘I literally have no idea why girls would like hardcore’ – See? Such a card! Anyway, his musing about Wales, including some comments about how it’s ‘five years behind’, intrigued me, not because it was ill-informed, although I think it was, but because it was both funny and dismissive at the same time. Being funny and dismissive at the same time is interesting. Its an often unconscious social tactic, we all do it, and it is clever and, in a way, dangerous. Why? Well, think about how many times you’ve been lost for words because someone’s said something you’re not into, but everyone laughed. The only space it leaves for those who disagree is one where they’re easily dismissable, again, as either humourless jerks, or overly-PC, or feminazis, or just not ‘getting it’, or whatever reactionary reduction works depending on the argument in question. These universal forms of dismissive humour end up the polar opposite of the buzzy awesomeness of open debate I mentioned above. It’s the ultimate shutdown.

In a similar vein is the outcome of my column-before-last when I wrote about girl bands and London, lazily using a mesh of different observations out of context, to basically be a bit scathing. I had a point but I think I buried it. Suffice to say it pissed off a number of people, some of whom wrote to me or got in touch in other ways, but through the magic of communication, we all pretty much got to an understanding, even if it was agreeing to opposition. This included one friend who recognised an experience I’d had watching her band in there. I was ashamed of myself as it was only a semi-conscious inclusion, but moreover, for me to write about the dire need for challenging our own representation whilst effectively putting words in another girl’s mouth, well, sucks to be me on that one. Sure, we can all admit to an ill-judged turn of phrase, I hope I definitely did then, but its especially easier if you’re not starting from a position of supposed untouchability. All too often I see this, no room to debate because opinion is predicated on that kind of liberal nihilism that has come to the fore in some punx attitudes. This, of course, is a world away from Mob Rules (their singer is perhaps the most switched-on person I know) but its an attitude that’s all too prevalent, I’m sure you know someone who’s working this steez, or trying. It’s the ultimate shutdown to any kind of ideological challenge, a boring, bland brick wall that has no space of possibility or change or ‘fuck yeah!’ or ‘fuck no!’ about it, just pure ‘nothing matters’ or worse still an insinuation that somehow, to think that you can affect your own environment is so horrifically behind the curve that its actually sort of embarrassing the person you’re challenging to the point where they’re cringing. It’s a hopeless language without any words, all shrugs and sibilants, and it’s everywhere. I blame the hipster media conspiracy, but that’s another story. Critical thought isn’t a hangover from the 90s, fer chrissakes, okay some chumps didn’t do their research and it became part of a bigger cliché, but aren’t we over the backlash from that yet? Calling ‘bullshit’ is badass, and I hope to god it becomes ‘cool’ again, or otherwise, hey, when the context of this newfound nonchalance is lost, as it doubtless quickly will be, we might just find we’ve all ended up back in Wetherspoons* School of inter-personal politics with the dickheads from school and someone’s racist, wasted uncle. Bummer, non?

Back to the topic of that throwaway comment about the punk scene in Wales. It’s a small country, part of the UK, and traditionally, i.e. in all sketchy comedy or tabloid press, lampooned for being ‘backwards’ and in-bred. This brought up some interesting ideas, not least the issue of what it might mean to reproduce mainstream cultural prejudice, even casual racism (same goes for classism) in punk. This is where everyone screams ‘God, she really can’t take a joke…’ but roll with me here..of course I’m not saying I would lay those crimes at the friendly feet of Mob Rules. However, as I was incapable of leaving my thoughts on this to remain only a dissatisfied tut, I thought I would include my fellow countrymen, and ask Alex B.

Alex B has been putting on DIY Gigs on in two cities in South Wales for eight years or so under various banners. He’s been fucked over plenty of times, lost money, put on hundred of bands (including Mob Rules…) and has been instrumental in literally building the community there from the ground up. Again, this may be all rose-tinted because I learnt everything I needed to know from finding out what that metaphorical cover song was and trading tapes at his early gigs. Not enough girls around and thats still a problem, and was part of the reason I left, but still, for all the bad metal and the basketball vests of the earlier days, those gigs are part of the reason I am here, for better or worse jamming Biohazard as hard as Delta 5. Anyway, objectivity here is impossible due to my irrational, weird, slightly shameful pride in the hillside, but the idea of being ‘behind’ in terms of punk trends is an interesting thing to be brought up, I think. Especially coming from an interview with what has come to be the closest band England has to ‘mysterious guy hardcore’ (due to no engineering of their own, I might add.) Hardcore punk in South Wales has endured ‘lean years’ like you wouldn’t believe, as lifers like Welly Artcore could sagely tell you. For me, it has a certain kind of specificity that yeah, probably did once come out of being slightly removed from touring circuits of bigger bands and what not, but since I was a teenager has had a lot to do with a thriving scene that is insular in a good way, not without problems of course, but with a dedicated venue which ‘gets’ DIY that many other towns dont have (Le pub in Newport, although R.I.P TJ’s, where I and many others cut their teeth metaphorically and physically) Should we all attend to the hype train and the cyclical trends of hardcore punk that can basically be boiled down to whether people in other parts of the country are choosing to display or hide their Youth of Today records this month? I say no. Alex puts all this better than me…

MRR: Hi Alex, hows it going?

CCHC: Good thanks, just enjoying Cardiff City FC making the playoffs, another reason for the English to hate the Welsh, and all that.

MRR: How do you respond to the charge that hardcore punk in south Wales is five years ‘behind’ the rest of the UK?

CCHC: All hardcore is backwards anyway. Like, if you are honest, when was the last time you truly heard something original and new in hardcore punk? It doesn’t really work like that. What our friend Conor and his Northern buddies actually mean is: Five years ago, the North was the cool place to be. At that point, the whole Dead & Gone records, Straight edge, Youth Crew thing was simply the ‘in thing’. But then if you go back three more years, it was the Canterbury scene, and bands like xCanaanx, November Coming Fire and whoever else. I suppose you could just say that right now, it’s been South Wales’ time. Kids look to us for what’s good and that’s awesome, because 7 or 8 years ago – Wales was a bit of a joke. Maybe, because we are Welsh, and differ to all the aforementioned scenes (We’ll never have a big straightedge or vegan interest for instance) so to some people we still are a joke. But, I can assure you, it’s just misguided jealousy. And in a few more years it’ll be exactly the same somewhere else.

MRR: Does it matter? And what should people check out from Wales to prove/disprove this?

CCHC: To be honest, no, it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to start selling people the good and bad of Welsh hardcore punk here. If you like what we’ve been doing awesome, and if you don’t that’s fine too. But at least give it a chance instead of creating some preconceived notion of what it’s about. At the end of the day its just music, it isn’t something to be intellectualised to death or something to be treated with such elitism. Come and check out a show at Lepub in Newport, you’ll be treated to a much friendlier and fun hardcore show atmosphere than a local show in say, I don’t know, Leeds?

MRR: So, is it bad to support your friend’s bands or like a band more based on where they come from?

CCHC: Maybe I missed the point of hardcore somewhere along the line – but isn’t that partially the idea? You know, the whole self containment thing. Friends and like-minded people with a common interest, supporting each others bands, Zines, labels and so on? Did DC hate New York, because all those kids supported each others projects? Then again, if some of my friends recorded some crap demo, I’d tell them it was crap. It is possible to be alert to what’s good and what’s bad, even when it involves your friends. It’s just funnily, in recent years, South Wales has been quite good at getting things right.

Alex had some more to say that can be summarised for reasons of space in an invitation to check out some bands and shows, which can be done here (.myspace.com/cardiffhype.) In conclusion, Mob Rules, Wales Rules, everyone’s happy.

While we’re on the subject of current or recent Welsh bands, there is more than just the straight up hardcore vein going on and it is once again underrated and beastly good quality. We’ve just come back from a tour with Facel Vega, from Porthcawl which is a little further west than Cardiff, who sound like the best parts of Rites of Spring mixed with Born Against. I also have to mention The Take who split up three years ago, on April 4^th 2007 I think. I remember the date because I would find out that at the very moments I was watching their last show, my then-boyfriend was doing the do (the old ‘in-out’, the rudes, etc etc) on someone that wasn’t me. So, their LP – Dolomite, which I was carrying back on the Megabus home when he called to say so, had such bad associations for such a long time that I even considered throwing it out. That would have been a total boon for my doorstep rubbish collection man, cos even without resonance, the lyrics and riffs with this band are singularly incredible. It has bits of a lot of the angular later DC stuff like Bluetip, or Jawbox and reminds me in places of Samiam in the pointed sadness of the vocals, but with a slight trace of a Cardiff accent ! Just brilliant DIY indie-rock with massive angry choruses. I think you can even still get it from Bombed Out records – nice proof that not all northern initiatives can’t hack the Welsh! – try www.bombedout.com. Also check out Harbour, The Keep, Bedford Falls, Threat Manifesto and Saturday’s Kids.

*Oh, non-Brits, you could substitute Wetherspoons, a well-known chain of cheap pubs, for any Sports bar, I think.

Ps. I typed the words ‘Baby, Baby, Baby, won’t you come to me as a horse?’ at the beginning of this column as it came out of my speakers – misheard Sacred Love by Bad Brains of course, and hoped to include it in all its ridiculousness somehow. Now this column’s all over, word-count-load all shot, and its stayed irrelevant, but I can’t bring myself to delete, so here it shall stay, in honour of HR’s lovely payphone timbre, a voice so great as to persuade even the strictest non-animal lover to join some fantasy legion of Lower East Side Horse Fanciers…. I’m tired. What a bunch of nonsense. One love. bryonybeynon@gmail.com // bigtakeover.co.uk

Interviews with:
No Talk
Foreign Objects
Plus a ‘bumper’ Shitty Limits US tour report

ISSUE ONE – Completed the first week of december, 2007

this is what i said about it at the time (i used to write in an annoyingly slangy way, i’ve tried to curb that)

“shit is getting ragged. its freezing outside, shoes are soaked, no amount of gravy can heal this. xerox salvation is on its way, modern hate vibe issue one, a fanzine in the fine tradition, high contrast black white and nasty. expect nice design and rude talk. i’m starting off local(ish), interviews with shitty limits and cold ones, some insight on the overrated/venerated/oughta-be-cremated holy trinity of opinion forming, an informative how-to of hardcore tiers, diggin in the crates for the record nerdarious, and samples of the kinds of aimlessly bilious rants that are an everyday feature in our house”

there are none left. i’m a bit embarrased by it, but it’s out there. may reprint at some point.

After that, I moved to London.

ISSUE TWO – MHV ‘Chronicles of Gnarlier’ (Completed last week of July 2008)

I tried a bit harder with the interviews in this.

- Mob Rules
- DFJ (Mind Eraser)
- Ironclad

‘Columns’ if you will include amongst others:

- Review of the last Lintfabriek gig
- Panic on the streets of Brixton: South Wales to South London
- Five things I learnt from the Wu Tang Manual
- Why you should listen to Poison Idea
- Rinko Kikuchi, Lil Wayne and Chloe Sevigny
- Five things I learnt from the Anti-Matter Anthology
- Citalopram is the new Cocaine: Batshit Grans & The Flatline Generation
- A (Drunk) Treatise on ‘Saving’ Hardcore

I caught a reasonable amount of shit for some of the opinions in this, and generally felt a bit weirded out by its ‘reception.’ nothing that controversial, by most people’s standards. despite the fact that everyones got a messageboard opinion, i guess these zine starved times (in southern UK at least) meant that a lot of people took it to mean that if i’d bothered to ‘publish’ something, i thought my word was absolute truth. There are some left, I think.

ISSUE THREE MHV – Triceraflops/Fluxine (finished May 2009)

Interviews with:

Brian Walsby – Double Negative
Tommy Stupid – The Stupids
Chris Bickel – In/Humanity

I got into buying weird books about fluxus happenings, june paik, site specific art and all kinds of stuff i was trying to challenge my (by then half flayed from the below employment) brain into processing, so this zine was illustrated with that stuff. I didn’t try and write about it though. I got really gripey about referential hipperati, resulting in an article entitled ‘No renaissance: cutting through fuzz pop’s shit caked underbelly.’ Mediation on Immigration, Belgium as a state of mind (basically a shitty/sceptres tour report but hopefully less boring) lessons learnt from Crucifix.

I have just reprinted this one.

Including all fees and postage, paypal this address:

Including all fees and postage, paypal this address:
£1.50 in the UK
£1.80 in the EU
£2.20 to the US
£2.40 to CAN
£3.00 to AUS

ish. or buy it at shows, i always have some on me, they might be a bit dogeared. get in touch for everything else. i love trades. comment here.

number four will happen soon, like really, soon, honestly, ive only being saying that a year.

April has bust through the seams and alla sudden work is a warzone, silent strikes (union members won’t tell me whats happening and I couldn’t join if I wanted to, no contract, no rights.) Management bargaining postures are as subtle as King Jong-Il, I’m trying to show solidarity for struggles that aren’t mine, but the only mind in which I’d be a scab, as a temp, for covering shifts left empty due to strikes, is my own, and i’m pretty sure its the temps they’re cutting out anyway. Gah. Some say cover your own ass and the rest will follow, but signing new contracts that rob all of any unauthorised toilet breaks (‘please sir, can I take a piss?’) and forbid talking with other staff unless ‘brief and/or work-related’ may be one step too far. Bear in mind as a lowest-rung ‘visitor host’ in a kinduvuabigdeal museum, this means literally standing in a room by yourself for eight to ten hours. Take away my aimless chats with cooworkers and you take away my humanity and soon my sanity. I hid a scrawled ‘fuck you’ in an unusually elaborate signature and signed it anyway. Comedically self defeating strategy, that and talking all the louder on shift – Insolence as a form of rebellion, I notice myself slowly getting slacker as shining examples are ignored and the tiniest indiscrepancies of my colleagues are seized upon. Phil’s got a bad leg, used up all his sick days, management are onto him he says, sure of it, croaks when he’s worried, and from today he must ask a supervisor a third his age for permission to can limp to the loo. Angie’s been there fifteen years, the place is her whole life, she’s got a grip on that radio like you wouldn’t believe (received, over) more than just a last straw for her. Something about struggles assuming new forms. These are our weird new quiet battles, the frontline’s been effaced with some corporate-sponsored street art, and the factory has glass doors and award-winning architecture. Culture mercenaries working flexitime and wondering idly about tax rebates. Motivation hits the floor and the gap between what they’re told and what they know becomes too big to jump.

2. NHS – Neat Hospital Shit.

This month I endured general anaesthetic for the first time. It was a routine procedure administered one hundred percent free, gratis and for nothing on the NHS – that last, bustling but loveable vestage of a British socialist backbone that has long since succumbed to early-onset neo-liberal crumbling. It is still the largest employer in Europe, I was born and (god willing if it’s still here then) will die in its hospitals, and the National Health Service is the indirect benefactor of my life having also paid my Dad to dispense what is admittedly, these last few years, a bulging mountain of daily methadone scripts as a ‘community chemist’ in our native South Wales for his entire pharmaceutical career. Aneurin Bevan, the creator of the reforms that saw the introduction of this national free-for-everyone framework, was also, incidentally, a lovely Welsh man with a valleys lilt. One of the first things I was handed on my resurfacing into the world, by the kindly nurse, along with a biscuit and some juice, was a newspaper which detailed news of Obama’s healthcare reforms. The circumstances and real arguments are beyond my knowledge but the bizarre cell-based judgements handed out to Americans who for whatever reason get ill then can’t afford their treatment made me stop feeling sorry for myself sharpish, sitting as I was, in my free bed with my free juice and my new, polyp-free sinuses.

3. Four good songs for Spring

Anyway, since all i’ve been doing is popping codeine (all prescription drugs are also free – regardless of who you are if you live in Wales, thanks devolved left-leaning government – or free if you live in England and can prove you’re poor enough, which isn’t hard right now…) I’ve been listening to songs over and over again and proselytizing weirdly, as you’ll see. Cram this mini-mix hypothetically into your earholes for Easter and beg for mercy…jesus is dead, the pope, says the papers, is some manner of paedo, so let’s party.

Lack of Knowledge – Danger to Life.

I downloaded this LP by accident, late pass on a lot of this Crass Records stuff that isn’t Crass, the most, most pleasurable surprise. Androids of MU! Honey Bane! And the best thing is you’re not unlikely to come across some of these records in most of the more neglected charity shops around London (american friends perhaps you call this ‘thrifting’, you’re gross) anyway, Lack of Interest are an interesting group. Pretty much everything that it had always bugged me that was kind of lacking from Joy Division is distilled into these detailed intelligent tunes (in the good way, not the ‘feels like it needs to explain itself separately’ way) They have those style buzz-AND-howl basslines, a bit of new wavey stomp to them and lots of pointed lyrics about girls working in factories, mountains of black bags, diatribes reminiscent of Crisis with A-levels. It sounds like urban trauma and grey faces, weird guitar twinkle that puts you all off kilter, then expanding into awesome sudden upbeat climax in the way that does sure remind of that Ian Curtis in his more open mouthed seizure songs, but like I said…better. This tune starts with a fucking air raid siren, don’t tell me it’s not perfect.

Neon Blud – Sophomore Blud

Now I’m not being funny but this band sounds like fucking No Trend with a teenage girl singer, caught me absolutely by surprise (was expecting more ‘woah dudes, aren’t we like, so unsettling and deranged and shit bro?’ and all that cheaply executed novice pedal pushing post-first-Cult-ritual-demo impersonal impersonator steeze) but the whole of the Whipps CS is so lucid and on point, colourful and noisy as shit in a considered way, this could be Born Against for the first twenty seconds, until the vocalist kicks, quite literally, in, and it could be The Wrecks or Nog ­Watt. I’d kill for physical copy of the tape, so smack my thigh and call me a hypocrite but this is just incredibly good quality, contemporary, awesome.

Non-Band – Duncan Dancin’

I don’t know that much about this all-girl band beyond that it was the stand-out track on a mix, released in 1982, I got but the shouty Japanese vocals literally sound like the baby voice I use to talk to animals (lots of plosives and eee-ing) which make it great. Post punk, bass and sax and lots of space. Brilliant bedroom dancing, which I WILL now be able to actually do without fear. Yes, the man who the crazy lady that I live with has chosen to move in is doing so as I type this, he shares an adjoining wall with a set of double doors set into it with me that I have ’sound proofed’ (badly) because I was warned he was doing a doctorate and would NOT appreciate my NOISE. However, upon making the gent a cup of tea, he revealed he used to play sax. As aforementioned loonette is a jazz-obsessive, I assumed that was his passion too, so imagine my joy and relief (I don’t get jazz really, I pretend when necessary though) when he said ‘Er, more, like, punk sax really, making noises here and there, problem is you can’t get too excited or nothing comes out.’ Maybe thats what happened with Non-band, the sparseness was hyperventilation! Joy of joys though, looks like I can unstaple the duvet from the door. On further pressing, he used to hang out on the Kings Road, frequent Legends, wear bondage gear from Sex and his best mate went out with Billy Idol. I embarrased myself with how excited I got. I have a new ally!

Hygiene – Organic Shopper

I’ve been getting massively paranoid that the music part of this column is sort of redundant cos hasn’t everyone heard everything these days… So, to balance the books, here is Hygiene – we put a record out by them and its so brilliant but I’m scared to say so to people for fear it’s one of those occasions where one is subject to deflected humility when you release something like to avoid sounding like a weak sales pitch/self-aggrandisement. Fuck it, this band is way, way ahead of most others in this vein (there are few, I think the Human Race are also great though – http://www.myspace.com/thehumanRACE) in the UK – I want to show some love to Hygiene because, lets be honest here, I’ve been too scared to interview them for the longest time due to the fact that their individual specialist subjects are so wide and deep in range that i’d need a particularly scorn-proof kayak to traverse it. One day I will do it and learn everything from how to make value judgements on a good pair of sta-prest, to well, lots of other really quite important things about football and critical theory. Anyway, they are kind of the transatlantic equivalent to Airfix Kits, both in terms of post punk jerkiness and having a singer who has the ‘wrong’ (but so right) accent given the sonic-geography / locational identity of the band. Nat’s Canadian but everything else is very not-North American, which is so refreshing in a period where London bands are in love with all those forgettable geometric West coast mindless fuzz-peddlers.) Live they’re more brooding, coming over like if Mark E. Smith was Jewish and visibly terrified. On the cusp between half half-time scrap and premeditated theoretically-validated violence, some kind of pogo chin stroke? The Real psycho mafia, cheap pub uppers, crushing grey sundays. I’m killing it by trying to explain it. Listen to their song about the National Front Tea Party. Sniff glue not ketamine.