ONYX was the avant-garde electronic duo of American songwriter and instrumentalist Judd Stone, and British vocalist and fashion model Beveur in the early 80s.

The only instruments they used are drums /percussion and synthesizers – except for a primitive drum machine track that is used on “Planet X”. All of the instruments are played, and there is no syncing or sequencers used on any of the recordings. The bass tracks are keyboard bass. And what they recorded it is still fresh:

COMPLETE WORKS 1981-1983 will release in June on Osaka based Franco-Japanese label MIND RECORDS.

11 years ago in Atlanta, 4 girls have decided to start a band, walked in a pawnshop, bought the cheapest instruments and begun to learn play. So THE COATHANGERS‘ early recordings are not too defined works, but I like these nice no wave-like primitive garage rock songs. Naturally, they have developed their musical skill, but the music stayed simple, not too sophisticated but great garage rock and roll. There were more albums and some split 7″ singles (Audacity, Nü Sensae, Davila 666) but I think their best album LIVE is going to release on 1st of June on SUICIDE SQUEEZE RECORDS. Listen!

Oh, almost I forgot that one of the original 4 quit.

New Yorker PARQUET COURTS is a punk band. Hard to say anything else. OK, compared to Total Punk Records style punk bands they rather play pop music. Their influnces come from Velvet Underground, Ramones and Talking Heads, but I also hear The Fall and even Country Teasers in their music. I remember their first album was a big revelation for me. There the sound was more punk than on the next ones. Fortunately, unlike many others they don’t write the same record year by year. And now with the new album WIDE AWAKE we arrived to New Orelans:

SHILPA RAY  new EP  NIHILISM  on 16 May

The song “Shoot This Dying Horse” is a rainy day waltz about how bad things can happen to anyone, at any time in the most random and meaningless ways. More specifically, it’s about getting dumped at a bar two days before Christmas. It was inspired by and written after binge-watching the Grateful Dead documentary series Long Strange Trip.

On the B-side, there is an Alice Cooper cover. The story behind this version is that she and her band listened to this one a lot on tour. When she paid closer attention to the lyrics, she realized if sung by a woman the song could be a feminist anthem.

„What have I got
That makes you want to love me
Now is it my body
Or someone I might be
Or somethin’ inside me”

The original one.

Digital and limited cassette editon on NORTHERN SPY RECORDS (US)

GOSH! is a minimal psych-pop duo. OK, there are many. But when I got their new album ODYSSEY I wanted to show it to everybody. Hey, listen to this! So simple, bittersweet and beautiful.

GOSH! started when Padraig left his psychedelic post-americana band Nude Sunrise and started dating with Claire. One of the first moments they spent together there were guitars. Claire picked the bass and they learned „Badlands” from The Jesus and Mary Chain. Anyway she never played any instruments before and GOSH! is her first band. And it is among my brand new favourites.

New album ODYSSEY was written after they got back to Chicago from a chaotic tour. It remembers an underpaid journey as arduous as the real Ulysses’s, full of tragic twists and chemical quicksands. „All while watching the new season of Twin Peaks. It was a dark time, but we channeled that darkness and complete sense of defeat into creativity and in turn have produced something incredibly positive” – said Claire.

I know it coming soon on NICEY MUSIC

Unfortunately at the moment I cannot show the song Lake Shore Drive to you, but you can listen to it in KILLBONOCLUB this Saturday.

Cadillac born New Orleans based American traditionalist LUKE WINSLOW-KING plays a mix of old, but maybe eternal American tunes with his band: ragtime, country, blues, gospel, dixie, bluegrass, jazz, rock and roll with minimal and occasionally brass band orchestration.

New album BLUE MESA out soon on BLOODSHOT RECORDS (US)

„BLUE MESA” on Bandcamp

LWK on Spotify

This was a happy Wednesday morning because I have got the new album ROACH GOIN’ DOWN of American avant-punk girl trio PALBERTA. On this album Ani, Nina, and Lily continue to pave the way as innovators in the field of guitar-based music, delivering a barrage of twisted, catchy hymns that manage to be both challenging and feverishly compelling. They combine the band’s signature frenetic instrumentation with a thoroughly developed pop sensibility that fans merely glimpsed on previous releases. And this time it’s grounded by a lyrical nuance and newfound melancholy that gives the record an air of maturity compared to previous releases. But best describe their music what I’ve found on their FB page:

“You wanna wabbada? Wap wap wap dabbada?
You see that mabada? ding ding dack dabbada?”

Album on Bandcamp

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)

CHAI is 4 Japanese girls: Mana, Kana, Yuna and Yuuki. They say Tom Tom Club, Basement Jaxx, Gorillaz, Cansei de Ser Sexy and Marvin Gaye as their influences. I add Devo and Gary Numan to them. This song about the world where the pretty face and cute shape are far more important than the personality:

Their debut album PINK released now on BURGER RECORDS (US)

Originally released on FLAKE RECORDS (JP)

Influential three women fronted NY city post punk band BUSH TETRAS were founded in 1979 by guitarist Pat Place after leaving the no-wave group James Chance and The Contortions. They brought funky dance songs and vocal rhythms to the freaky outsider punk scene. The band’s trajectory as jagged as one of their own solos. They broke up in 1983, reunited for a short time in the mid-90s and second time in 2005. Since they have released two albums and the third TAKE THE FALL is coming in April on WHARF CAT RECORDS (US)

They charted „a new image of womanhood – spiky, uncompromising, androgynous, sarcastic, tough and too clever by half” by journalist and musician Vivien Goldman.

“I got a right to say FUCK YOU!!!” is how the new album from guitarist Marc Ribot’s trio Ceramic Dog starts off, with Ribot howling in anger at corruption, tyranny, life in general, and nothing in particular. YRU Still Here? just in time to remind us that now is a moment when anger is necessary and unavoidable. Musically it continues the lineage of his earlier experimental no-wave/punk/noise groups Rootless Cosmopolitans and Shrek:

Beside Ribot you can find Shahzad Ismaily (Secret Chiefs 3, Will Oldham, Ben Frost) on bass and drummer Ches Smith (Xiu Xiu, Secret Chiefs 3, Trevor Dunn’s Trio Convulsant).

And Ribot? For me he is known about his works with John Zorn, The Lounge Lizard and Tom Waits, but he played together such musicians as Solomon Burke, Beth Orton, Marianne Faithful, Caetano Veloso, Laurie Anderson, Cibo Matto, Vinicio Capposella, Auktyon (Russia), Alain Bashung, Madeleine Peyroux, Sam Phillips, Norah Jones, The Black Keys, Robert Plant, Elvis Costello and many others. And of course he has released lots of album under his own name. He has also worked for decades as a tenant union and artist rights activist, where he mastered the agit-prop skills used to such dazzling effect on hits such as “Fuck La Migra” and “Muslim/Jewish Resistance”.

The album „YRU Still Here?” will release soon on Northern-Spy (US), Yellowbird (Europe) and P-Vine Records (Japan). It’s my favorite album since I’ve got it.