SOUTH LONDON ELECTRIC DANCE PUNK band LEG PUPPY offers a satirical attack on the modern world. Heavily influenced by classic TV shows inc Nathan Barley & Black Mirror. Behind the satire is a band with something to say, tackling issues such as gambling addiction, social media narcissism, property developers & spam bots.

They say about their new album: THE AIR IN UTOPIA IS POISON is a dark, grooving odyssey revealing an unnerving reflection of post-Brexit Britain. Despite containing a lot of humour, it’s a very dark album with some very hard-hitting themes:

That aside, we wanted to take the piss out of the music industry, where mediocrity and safeness wins.

This man from the little English town of St. Albans

has rebuilt Pink Floyd 1979s monster concept album The Wall brick by brick.

Maybe you think, what I also: who the fuck is care about Pink Floyd? Well, Ben Wallers. And this man, I say, is total crazy: he has rebuilt that whole fucking 26-song album! Perhaps on long rainy days.

After more than two years it released I thought after a long hardworking Friday that the time is here, I lay down, and just listened to it. Hey, I say, it’s not a fuckin’ cover album but an authentic masterpiece like the original one. Mr. Wallers not just modernized, but reinterpreted it for our time. The Wall is about a man who builds an imaginary wall brick by brick around himself from his childhood against his mental traumas and falls in total isolation and gets psychedelic visions about himself as a fascist dictator. And this wall has been rebuilt for us with the title The Dark Side of The Wall by master Ben. He has built it under the name of The Stallion with a mate from his band.

BUT WHO THE FUCK IS BEN WALLERS? A cold bloodily funny guy who writes so sarcastic and provocative lyrics that some says he will be killed one time because of them. He got a notoriety by his band The Country Teasers. It crosses the punk and country and western music in a unique damaged way with some Scotch accent. Also plays alone as The Rebel, and has some projects with different people and made some collabs, e.g. with Texan rock band Spray Paint, and surprisingly: he is a Pink Floyd fan.

And finally, I have listened to the whole fuckin’ original one first time in my life. Hey, it was hard. I say, you don’t do it! Well, I have just tried to do it. At this moment, after 5 songs, I stopped it. Sorry, it’s not my wall.

Egy TIGER LILLIES koncert a legjobb szórakozás. Van ott három angol férfi festett arccal, mint valami cirkuszi bohócok, és dalokat énekelnek, és majd minden dal egy-egy mocskos történet maximális átéléssel előadva, és te nevetsz, bár inkább sírnod kellene ezeken a groteszk dalokon. Például ez arról szól, amikor valaki már túl van mindenen, a kéjgyilkolás sem elégíti ki:

„Bűn az élet”, lehetne a mottójuk. Minden fajtáját megénekelték. Lemezeik kaján katalógusai az emberi eltévelyedéseknek, haszonlesésnek, perverzióknak. Például ebben a dalban van szex, drog és sivárság:

Az egész a londoni Sohoban kezdődött egy bordély feletti padlásszobában, ahol Martyn Jacques teológia-filozófia szakos hallgató lakott, és a hely szelleme inspirálta a TIGER LILLIES megalapítására. Azóta sok hulla lefolyt már a Temzén, 30 év alatt, haj, de mennyi, a Yard sem tudná megmondani. Ők közben kiadtak, ha jól számolom, 36 lemezt, közte a Háromgarasos operát, amit kihoztak kettőből.

OKTÓBER 31-én BUDAPESTEN az A38-on
mutatják be 30. évfordulós ünnepi műsorukat

és remélem előadják Peggy Lee „Is That All There Is?” című 1969-es slágerének 10 perces verzióját. A dal egyébiránt Thomas Mann Kiábrándultság című novellája dalban az író saját szavaival:

PRIMO! is a raw minimal guitar pop band from Melbourne with the two girls from one of the most amazing Australian pop bands TERRY. Their short, beautifully simple and purposeful songs reference the 40-hour working week, the city, bureaucracy, walking, a ghost and a mirage:

They are going to European tour in August. And also there will be a TERRY tour in Europe in September.

AMICI will release on 13 July on UPSET THE RYTHM RECORDS (UK)

JOHNNY MAFIA hails from Sens, Burgundy (which is known more for it’s wheat and cereal production than rock ‘n’ roll) and bring a young, snotty, explosive and ferociously fun energy that drives audiences into a near-frenzy. Inspired by classics like The Ramones, T-Rex, and The Clash, they also draw heavily on contemporary acts like
Ty Segall, Jay Reatard, and the Wavves. The band have just released the video single for BIG BRAWL

after recently finishing recording and mastering their sophomore album PRINCES DE L’AMOUR with producer JIM DIAMOND – who was the bass player of Dirtbombs and produced albums for The Sonics, Andre Williams, The John Spencer Blues Explosion, White Stripes and countless others.

Jim was forced to shut the doors at his studio Ghetto Recorders in 2015 due to what can only be described as “hipsterfication in the downtown Detroit area when his landlord doubled his rent. He set up a new base in Montpellier, and continues his prolific presence across the scene, working with bands as far and wide from Cambodia to Cleveland. In recent years, Diamond has become something of an unofficial in-house label producer/engineer at DIRTY WATER RECORDS.

The album PRINCES DE L’AMOUR will release on 9 November on DIRTY WATER RECORDS (UK).

Now you can listen to the split CD single of two strange South London bands. On the one hand H0NKIES play a blend of South-London scuzz incorporating elements country, electronic, post-punk and lo-fi. File next to bands such as these South London fellows: Goat Girl, Meatraffle, Warmduscher and Peeping Drexels, but also Rebel and Country Teasers of course.  And thye are really just “like a drunken boat.”

On the other part PEEPING DREXELS play sleazy melodies with sloppy beats from South London scum. It’s music for horrible people like you.

It is released on PERMANENT CREEP RECORDS. Order here.

HOTEL LUX tells a tale of barbarity, sorrow, and vengeance. It is an attempt to step into the British realist tradition of portraying the most vulgar and distorted aspects of the communities they (we) live in:

7″ single will be released on Big Score Records in June. Listen and preorder!

You can listen to more songs of them here. Anyway Hotel Lux was the abode of exiled or escaped foreigner communist cadres in Moscow between 1921-54. They lived in fear there because nobody knew who would be labeled as a terrorist, traitor, conspirator or heretic next day.

I love if a band can make me some laugh with their music like
DOG CHOCOLATE from London.
By their own words, they perhaps play sloppy, messy, silly and jerky punk music:

Jono plays a couple of drums, Matthew plays a guitar and a load of pedals, Rob plays another guitar and sings some songs and Andrew sings most the songs and plays another guitar and sings some songs and Andrew sings most the songs and plays percussive keyboard when he’s not. They write songs without thinking too much about things that make them feel a lot, as it sez in the song „It’s About Giving A Shit” but at the same time not giving a shit!! It says more too, but dont worry about that now.

New album MOODY BALLOON BABY on UPSET THE RHYTHM RECORDS (UK)

ARNDALES is a sardonic post-punk quartet,
a hidden gem at an English countryside warehouse.
Their long-awaited debut album „SHOPS” coming soon.

Some thoughts about them in special LUTON HAIKU style.
There are rules and laws which people attribute to haiku writing
which aren’t the concern of Luton haiku writers.

Luton, the lively English town somewhere in the Polish-Pakistani borderland
to where I arrived 2 and half years before as a mentally emigrant from Hungary.
Of course it was raining that day.

And then totally suddenly The Fall played in Luton
at a fest where the other day Lee Scratch Perry was the big name
but that day I went to London to see Guitar Wolf.

And then my eyes got stuck in a name in the festival book: ARNDALES.
Got its name after Arndale Centre which is known as The Mall in Luton nowadays.
And one time it was the biggest covered shopping centre in Europe.

I googled them. And it turned up that In The Red Records release them.
And it releases just fine stuff, like Bassholes, Black Lips, Chain & The Gang,
Jay Reatard, Kid Congo, Oblivians, Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, Andre Williams

And I read their former bands are Country Teasers, Thrilled Skinny,
Badgewearer, Pregnant Neck, Collapsed Lung, Zuno Men,
and they played songs like this

rigth before The Fall at the same place.
And there I observed the guitar player’s hamburger patterned socks.
I thought those were witty symbol of the consumer idiotism.

On their new album they have taken inspiration from the world of retail jargon.
E.g. the opening track „Prestige Pricing” is named after the practice of inflating
the price of a product to indicate it’s prestigious status.

The album „SHOPS” is coming soon on IN THE RED RECORDINGS.
And there is nothing shiny. Just old fashioned music like the old Fall
with a Negativland song which is replaced to mid Bedfordshire.

The story of INSECURE MEN has started in Paris when Fat White Family’s main songwriter Saul Adamczewski was asked to leave the band temporarily after refusing to vacate the Paris venue the band was playing on the night of the Bataclan attack because he’d arranged to meet a heroin dealer there later on.

He said about: “I fell into a downward spiral, living on a friend’s floor just smoking crack and heroin and doing nothing else. After four months I snapped out of it and realised I needed to get clean. When I came out of rehab I had nothing left other than these songs – I was like a ship without a sail – so it started to look like Insecure Men was something I should definitely pursue as my main project.”

He teamed up with his school friend Ben Romans-Hopcraft (from the band Childhood) and recorded those songs, blend together exotica, easy listening, lounge and timeless pop music.

INSECURE MEN debut album released on FAT POSSUM RECORDS (US)

ART IS HARD is a small independent record label in Bristol (UK) run by two friends influenced by the attitude and ethics of labels such as Factory, Wichita, Anticon and Dischord. They have a strange habit: release things – mainly postcards – with music, but they published a scarf with download code too.

To celebrate their seventh birthday they asked seven label artists  Samuel Stacpoole from Black Tambourines, KEEL HER, /please/, The Death of Pop, Shunkan, Gorgeous Bully, Oro Swimming Hour to record a 50 second song. Each track is an infectious burst of garage balladry, lo-fi bliss or trademark jangle:

300 copies black 7″ flexidisc with gold foil artwork with a postcard containing a download code. And if you would like to get postcards with music regularly then join the club.

ACID TECHNO : A WAY OF LIFE NOT A FASHION STATEMENT

A rebel, the founder of the Stay Up Forever record label and collective, which has been going against the mainstream since ’93.

Turning from the punk towards techno raves in the early 90s, started hosting-supporting squat and warehouse parties, thus created their own crowd and party scene in London. Linked up with the Conspiracy and Bedlam Sound System for Chris and his friends it was a forthright move to the Spiral Tribe and its traveller scene. Then they got involved in such free raves as Lechlade and Castlemorton Common Fest in ’92. Now it was really only within a reach to set up a record label which represents their sound and keeps up this network.

As the collective began with spinning some of those German producers’s records like Hardfloor (who can be considered as one of the pioneers of the acid sound) their own way led to the evolution of the acid techno: the fusion of goa, hard trance, techno and acid house which in time became fast and grungy; fine tuned by raw, anarchist vibes.

So this November the label celebrates the 25th anniversary of it’s existence, the never-ending 90’s, the everlasting raves.

#happyanniversary!

Retroflex Presents Liberator 25
11/11/17
Bloc.
London