Free singles by Swiss/Canadian art-punk band PETER KERNEL. These songs are like the cross of (Dutch folk punk) The Ex and The Breeders.

Taken from the upcoming album Thrill Addict out in January 2015. Free from here

One of the two key members is the bassist Barbara Lehnhoff, with whom you can read an interview with reference to her amazing electronic side project, Camilla Sparksss here. Peter Kernel was formed because there was need of a soundtrack for her film.

Strange 80s style synth-pop, or a goth mix of Depeche Mode and New Order, or like the Hungarian synth-pop wonder, Új Látásmód Fúzió. Previous records were released by such little cult labels as Night-People, Dark Entries and Crash Symbols

Some Ember – s/t album on Dream Recordnings

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Boyracer and Wedding Present are written than their forebears. I don’t know, but it’s a good jangly noisy fuzzy indie pop song

Gold-Bears – „Dalliance” album on Slumberland Records (US)

Armand Margejka was born an Albanian small town Tropoia, located on the highland near the border of Kosovo. Tropoia district has had a long reputation as one of the wildest and most conservative regions in Albania, virtually out of control of every government in Tirana. The family arsenal often takes up a whole room and typically includes anti-tank mines, hand grenades, and rocket launchers besides rifles, revolvers, machine guns, stilettos, swords, baseball bats and all sorts of old guns which goes from father to son. Instead of insurance brokers insurgence agents go about the countryside. Albania was the most isolated and most poorest among the Eastern-European communist states. The Stalinism was the most persistent here. Moreover there are the tribal differences and the beautiful tradition of vendetta.

Margejka’s musical influences were Western cinema, MTV Europe, and fortuitous cassette tape of American pop/rock legends Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley taught Margjeka the fundamentals of rock and roll, and subsequently the English language. The country is however friendly and secure, he has changed Albania for Alabama. He plays indie folk rock with sure hands.

„Hummingbird” LP, CD on Communicating Vessels (USA)

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Ghetto Ghouls are (a handyman, a geography assistant, a sound guy, and a student) like their predecessor Texan punks,  Bobby Soxx, Dicks, Stick Man With Rayguns or Scratch Acid. This 7” couples a pair of songs from the S/T LP sessions

A G E N D E R is a strange synth punk band in Australia. It has started as Romy Hoffman’s one woman lo-fi punk project. She’s also known as a hip-hop artist under the name of Macromantics. His project has morphed into a trio. On drums: experimental electronic musician Melissa Agate, aka Sanso-Xtro. After these it’s surprising that the bass player Yolanda DeRose is just from a simple garage rock band, Mass Culture Suicide. The second album „is a spillage of sexual secrets and the purging of perversions.” The first track is a little deceiving…

„Fixations” LP on Desire Records (France)

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The singer and drummer met volatile French guitarist in London after he left an ad in their studio listing Television, Ennio Morricone and “everything at DFA Records” as influences. (DFA is an electronic dance music label, co-founded by James Murphy of LCD Sound System.) The most interesting person is the bass player, Jade Spranklen, who is also playing for the British pop singer Whinnie Williams (aka Sunday Girl), and she is an excellent illustrator, but cannot draws free style rap. But Felt Tip is an indie rock band like XTC or Gang of Four.

Simple Things digital EP on Fierce Panda (UK) on 9 June

Dick Diver‘s members are from such great Aussie bands as Boomgates, Total Control, UV Race or Lower Plenty. Easy melodic indie rock or jangle pop

7″ on Fruits and Flowers

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A celebration of the dawn of the Italian commercial television, through the use of its synthetic sounds/effects and its involuntary hypnotic potential by CADEO. It hides two main figures of the Roman scene: members of other projects such as System Hardware Abnormal, Hiroshima Rocks Around, Maximillian I, Micropupazzo, Polysick and TheAwayTeam. 80s style minimal electronic music

Old fashioned green fluo cassette inserted into a 12 pages ‘zine.
Limited to 100 copies by NO=FI Recordings

Fire Records is a British independent record label. In his roster: Blank Realm, Guided By Voices, Half Japanese, Las Kellies, Mission of Burma, Pere Ubu, Bardo Pond, Jad Fair. And some name from the past: Pulp, Chuck Prophet, Television Personalities, Lemonheads, Spaceman 3, Gun Club, Urge Overkill, Neutral Milk Hotel, Teenage Fanclub, Adverts. Fire throws a birthday party with his best new artists this evening. It will be streamed live. The gig starts at 8pm GMT (UK), 9pm CEST (Europe), 4am JST (Japan), 5am AEST (Australia), 3pm EDT (US East Coast), 12 noon PDT (US West Coast). Timing in GMT:

8:10PM – SCRAPS (AUS) > Weird minimal synth pop under influence of style of the 80s.
8:50PM – FAWN SPOTS (UK) > Punk rock trio. Devotees of early Joy Divison/Warsaw, Hüsker Dü and Rites of Spring. Razor edged, lightning fast short blasts of hyperactive noise with bittersweet melodies.
9:30PM – KEEL HER (UK) > High standard lo-fi experimental bedroom pop.
10:10PM – SCOTT & CHARLENE’S WEDDING (AUS) > “I’m a fucking furniture removalist from Adelaide. I write down-and-out pop songs. I write songs about every job that I do.”

STREAM HERE

„Slumberland began operations in 1989 as a collective effort consisting of members of DC area bands Velocity Girl, Big Jesus Trash Can/Whorl, Black Tambourine and Powderburns. We were inspired by such musical happenings as C-86, early Creation, Postcard, K, Bus Stop, lower East Side noise, and also the renegade art aesthetics of people like Cage, Burroughs and Duchamp. The explosion of punk had left behind a thriving network of ‘zines, labels and distributors and we felt that there was room for our noise-loving, pop-obsessed aesthetic. While there were loads of US indie labels releasing a steady stream of 7″s, there wasn’t much pop going on.”

Gold-Bears second album is on the way: Atlanta’s noise-pop greats are back with their second album. Dalliance is more focused and abrasive than that 2011 debut, combining their noise-pop influences from forebears like Boyracer and The Wedding Present with shades of the post-hardcore and post-punk. Order

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart are back! Brooklyn Indie Pop stalwarts The Pains of Being Pure at Heart just announced their third LP entitled Days of Abandon. The first single from the record, „Simple And Sure.” Listen ti it here. Order

Devon Williams‘ third solo album is a tour de force of shimmering, melodic pop, seamless blend of power-pop, orchestrated soft-rock and layered, complex jangle-pop that recalls such forebears as The Church, Felt and Aztec Camera. Listen to Flowers. Order

All out on 3rd June. Plus vinyl re-presses: first album from The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Frankie Rose‘s „Interstellar,” The Mantles‘ „Long Enough To Leave” and Joanna Gruesome‘s „Weird Sister.”

RNRXPRESS is our brand new series. Express opinion on the basis of only one listening. The materials get into this post by absolutistic decision, impulse or request.

Stagnant Pools is a drums’n’guitar duo from Bloomington, Indiana. They mix Sonic Youth with Joy Division in their noisy post punk indie rock music. Initially it’s interesting, but then it becomes very boring.

from the album Geist by Polyvinyl Records. Release: 10 June.

Here is their debut album in full.

A cult band in garage punk underground: LiveFastDie. Forward on GG Allin’s way

from Hit Stains LP which is a compilation from their singles on Almost Ready Records. First 100 on shit colored wax.

The band is named after a tattoo of GG Allin, and one of them is same town as GG — Littleton, New Hampshire. „I heard his music for the first time when I was 11, before I heard any other punk music. Living in Littleton, there’s always some older kid who’s proud of being from the same town as GG. I actually picked up his step-dad while he was hitch-hiking once. He tried to convince me to get an eight ball with him.” Eight ball: a quantity of cocaine or crystal that weighs an eighth of an ounce, which is equivalent to 3.5 grams.

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There was a very British-style twee pop band in America, the Aberdeen. The band It formed in 1993 and signed to the seminal English label Sarah Records, where they were the only not British act. The label closed in 1995, the band broke-up in same year. In the recent times some members have started a new project, The Luxembourg Signals. First single before the album on Shelflife Records

Manchester’s Laurie Hulme writes intimate songs about his grandfather’s life from caravan holidays to communistic views.

Weekday stories about the life or musical family photo album in bedroom folk pop / lo-fi indie rock style.

Songs For Walter – Meet Me At The Empire EP. Extremly limited re-issue with two bonus tracks on CD by Red Deer Club. Digital download is available sure.

Among the best and most interesting British music projects.

Bulbul started as a one-man band with guitar, drum machine and vacuum cleaner in Austria. It became a trio. They speak numerous musical languages from jazz to metal. They did cooperation with Leonid Soybelman (Ne Zhdali, Kletka Red), KK Null (Zeni Geva). Horribly funny music.

„Hirn fein hacken” album on Exile on Mainstream (Germany)
and Rock is Hell Records (Austria)

Some shows in Austria, Germany, Czech and Switzerland

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Carsick Cars are among the leading alternative Chinese rock bands. They describe themselves as noise rock band, but the measure of noise shows low degree. (Perhaps the Chinese notion about noise differs from the Western conception.) Soft Sonic Youth-like, Velvet Underground influenced indie rock with Chinese motifs on a surprisingly good album which was co-produced by Hamish Kilgoure from The Clean! (Influential New Zealander indie rock band.)

„3” album via Maybe Mars (China) and Tenzenmen (Australia)

Their side projects: 1. White+. Kraut-like electronic duo. First CD was produced by Blixa Bargeld (Einstürzende Neubauten, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds).
2. One of my fav Chinese bands: Snapline. Post punk trio. Debut album was produced and released by Martin Atkins (drummer of PIL, Pigface and many more).

An interview about the Chinese musical underground

Keith Morris is co-founder of two important hardcore-punk bands, Black Flag – where he was the singer, and Circle Jerks.  His new band is OFF! It was born from an aborted Circle Jerks recording session in 2009, and plays classic hardcore-punk a la Black Flag

Wasted Years album on Vice

Euro tour in October with Cerebral Ballzy. Budapest Oct 19 at A38

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The Steinbecks was founded by two Aussie bros in 1994. Easy indie pop

Kick to Kick album on Popboomerang (Aus, Asia, Africa)
and Matinée Recordings (America, EU)