Best Singles/EPs/Demos of 2015
Bummer – Spank 10” EP (High Dive)
From the gimp cover art and band name, you pretty much know what you’re in for with this KC trio and that is lurching, noisy ass heavocity with a gnarly edge. Music in this vein doesn’t need many flourishes as it’s all in the execution, but Bummer does manage to stand out with a supremely tight rhythm section and riffs that shapeshift enough to keep things interesting and dangerous with unexpected twists and turns.
Creative Adult – Ring Around the Room 7” (Run For Cover)
A-side is a strung out noisegaze swirl with a fog of synth and feedback that refuses to leave your ringing ears, while the B-side comes in with a few massive riff punches on “Travel” and a dramatic end track “Motgu.” If their Dead Air 7” and Psychic Mess LP didn’t get your attention, give this one a few listens and you’ll be lulled into their darkwave cloud.
Sie Lieben Maschinen – June Gloom cassette (Haymaker)
This ex-Season to Risk duo has managed to mutate their former band’s noiserock foundation into a beautifully sci-fried punk space where bouncing bass lines, dancy beats, and perfectly chilled postpunk vocals that sound like Randy “Biscuits” Turner on ecstacy collide in the future world Chrome foresaw in Alien Soundtracks. More than a few moments on this unassuming little tape summon the greatness of Six Finger Satellite’s late ‘90s output with enough tension and thrust to knock your shitty speakers off the shelf. Plus they tastefully end out their 11 tracks with a well done, stylistically stamped cover of Public Image Limited’s song “Public Image.”
Leviathan – My War Flexi (Decibel Flexi Series)
Black Flag’s My War album was one of the most oppressively depressing records of its era, chock full of Rollins’ most self-loathing, hateful and crushing catharsis and Greg Ginn’s sickest guitar eviscerations, so of course, why not a black metal version of its breakneck title track? While this easily could’ve been a formless glop of typical trendoid black metal, this sacred song is in great hands with Wrest, who simultaneously strangles the original version as he whips the already hyperaggressive riff into a buzzing swirl. I hadn’t even bothered to notice the song title before I put this on for the first time, and when I realized what I was hearing it was as if the freight train called “My War” that had run me over in my teen years had somehow passed through time and ran my ass down once again. It’s the heaviest damn flexi you’ll ever hear.
Loop – Array 1 12” EP(ATP Recordings)
One of the highlights of 2014 was to see this late ‘80s juggernaut regroup for a series of North American shows, blowing eardrums and minds with their uniquely haunting space rock. When word of new material came out, it was hard to imagine what a nearly 30-year-old Loop might sound like and I’m happy to say that the four tracks presented here can stand up next to the 1990 masterpiece A Gilded Eternity with a dreamlike presence that easily submerges you in a blanket of psychedelic sound. This new formation does update Loop’s sound with a few ethereal ambient touches ala Robert Hampson’s post-Loop group Main, and other members weave in the multilayered rhythmic sound of Hair & Skin Trading Co. into the fabric of this release. I’m seriously hoping and looking forward to a second Array and more.
Nature Boys – Pissy Wind 7” (Replay)
There are a number of punk bands in KC that’ve received more attention than this killer trio, but you won’t find a better mix of off-the-rails, tuneful ragers played at breakneck speed with sweaty energy. This latest release slays and shows that they aren’t mellowing out anytime soon.
Pampers – Right Tonight 7” EP (In The Red)
The weight and force of The Pamper’s jabbing riffs is so ridiculous and massive on this 7” that it somehow manages to be even more obnoxious than their early records. The 4 songs here are so focused and relentless that ya gotta wonder if they could carry this amount of energy over the length of an album, and judging from their amazing 2013 debut LP ya gotta admit these monsters probably could. Here’s hoping for a new LP!
Phantom Head – South of Heaven cassette (Self Released)
The Phantom Head cassette is full of downer dirges that occasionally bares its teeth with lumbering lowend guitar stabs and songs like “Do You Like This Life”, “Disconnect” and “Embrace the Beast.” The biliousness is much more severe here on hissing tape than on their early Bandcamp tracks. Fans of early Swans, Drunks with Guns, and the drone of Pissed Jeans Throbbing Organ 7” will find loner bliss between its two tiny, unstable reels.
Repairs – Decay / Cycle 7” (Hozac)
Hozac’s has a knack for stretching a bit outside the garage punk core they’re known for with some top shelf synth bands. Like Hozac’s 2013 7” from Italy’s Schonwald, this release from Australia’s Repairs is another buzzing electroblanket that deftly envelops the listener/victim into a cocoon of synthetic sound and lulls them further in with ghostly voice tracers. Imagine the inverse equation of Suicide covering Joy Division in the wettest dream scene of an adolescent Goth and you could almost explain what’s going on within the haunted grooves of this record.
Ufux – You Look Dark 7” (Jeth Row)
Ufux is the latest symptom of the sick strain of Chicago weirdpunk that can be traced back to the Functional Blackouts on through The Daily Void. This time the virus is a bit more cerebrally and aurally damaged in the vein of Drunks with Guns and Tractor Sex Fatality, dosed with a noisy neanderthal swagger that knocks back The Daily Void’s future shock a few millennia. Even though the theme song “Ufux” closes out the B-side at a fairly quick pace, the plodding tracks that precede it deliver the real meat.