Bizarro-Pop from Oklahoma, Garage Punk from Chicago

One of my favorite games ever is Rome: Total War. The original one, I just can't stop playing it. I saw tonight that I've been playing it since 2014. Jeeze. Time flies when you're having fun, I guess.

I got another podcast and the annual CNQ/Adam Holtz team-up in the works.

I go through phases. HC, grindcore, metal, garage punk, etc. Sometimes one genre or another appeals to me more than another. Sometimes I'll discover something I never heard before, wetcore or some shit, and be into that for a little while. Sometimes I get to feeling that everything sounds like everything else. Then something surprises me and I am reborn.

This Bizarro-Pop is super-cool, from northwest Oklahoma. My frame of reference for this is No-Rave a la Simo Soo, and Dan Deacon type stuff, I dunno what else sounds like this, but I guess they're referencing someone if it's not those guys. Really into this:

Raw garage punk from Chicago:

September Sounds Pt. 2

Ton of stuff this post but it catches us up on CNQ faves from September.

From a new Iron Boots LP comp collecting the Virginian hardcore punk band's complete discography, courtesy Grave Mistake Records and Triple B Records. Solid hc:

Debut album from hip-hop duo Mirage512 and Side Effect. Top notch "grown man rap":

Speaking of grown man rap, Big Pooh of Little Brother fame has a new album out with producer Nottz:

Australia's Simo Soo has a new ten track album out too. Glitch pop? Digital glam-rap? Noisy no-rave forever:

Lo-fi fun from Lexington, Kentucky. 17 track cassette available through Burger Records:

Two tracks from an unreleased split, courtesy Baltimore's SPHC records. Audacious noise punk, I love it:

Flowers of Evil has already gotten some real press courtesy Noisey; here's a track from their new LP put out by Canada's Deranged Records anyway. One of the guys in the band is from Crocodiles, and their garage-psych album "Boys" is one of the best listens of 2015, in my opinion.

Don't forget Austin's bad ass noise-enthusiasts Future Death have cassettes of their "Cryptids" EP still available:

Another cassette release, also with a female vocalist, from an Ohio 3-piece band:

Cool garage pop from Sweden, solo project of Nora Karlsson, recently signed to PNKSLM:

New track from Italian garage band The Meteopathics, off a tape split with Thee Loyal Wankers, courtesy German label Lo-fi Lo-life:

Speaking of Italians, here's some rad Italian powerviolence; with song titles like "Mullet For My Valentine," "Sperm Bank Robbery," and "Go Kart Kobain," I think they may be in a band just for the pun of it:

And to top things off, a quick blast of warp-core from Dallas:

7 Songs via Bandcamp/Nu-Spaz ATK

I'm lovin' that new Bully album, "Feels Like," and excited to see FIDLAR in a few weeks.

First up is CNQ's ace pal Kale Ogle and his bud Brian Abel bringing us rock'n'roll from my old stomping grounds up in the Ozarks of Arkansas. Two killer tunes:

From Ohio:

Australia's Simo Soo is back with a great new track:

From Oakland:

From Madrid:

New synthy awesome from CNQ Croatian faves Doomtown Records and Modern Delusion:

Noise punk from London:

Land of Blood and Sunshine, Modern Life is War, La Urss, Midnight Plus One, Leroy and the Drivers, and Simo Soo

I like this new psych-pop from Marshalltown, Iowa. You can order the 12" yellow vinyl of Land of Blood and Sunshine's Aeon from Very Nice Dementia:

I was reading the Wikipedia page for Marshalltown, Iowa, because I was like, what's up with there? And it said one of the town's notable exports is a band called Modern Life Is War, who I've never heard of, but this sounds cool:

Synchronicity: I read on Bremen's Sabotage Records newsletter that band Terrible Feelings new LP Tremors will be out in April, just in time for their tour with the aforementioned Modern Life is War.

Here's something else cool from Sabotage, coming out in March:

You can pre-order Limited Edition Red Shell Cassettes of this sweet action from Negative Fun Records, run out of North Carolina and New Hampshire.

Germany's Tramp Rec is in the habit of re-issuing awesome stuff on vinyl:

Life isn't complete without a Simo Soo track, this from 2011, but I just heard it for the first time, and it sounds fresh as all get out:

Matt's Top Ten Favorite Songs of 2014

For my Top Ten Favorite Songs of 2014 list, my parameters were simple: songs released in 2014 that I listened to over and over again for a period of days/weeks/months. Weirdly, lots of Aussies made my Top 10 this year. I dunno what's up with that, I guess they're just doing stuff I like down there.

10. Hardcore from Australia, released back in November:

9. Female-fronted hc from Cali, released back in August. I just saw on their facebook page that the lead singer left the band back in September:

8. Suckily, my #8 pick, "CH Drivers Are High" by Chapel Hill's garage rockin' Flesh Wounds, won't embed for some reason. So click that link and listen to it. Fun stuff.

7. I heard this noisy rocker and had to have a hard copy. They sent the pretty blue vinyl 7" fast too - it came all the way from Australia.

6. Same went for this bratty gem, also from Australia, but it has not arrived as promptly as the Mesa Cosa 45; I'm still waiting on my copy of Titty Riot, in fact. The Sufferjets have assured me it's on its way, however.

5. I liked the new King Tuff album all the way through and enjoyed seeing them live. Black Moon Spell was in heavy rotation on my headphones, on the record player, and in my head for weeks.

4.This Drake cover, released back in January by CNQ's favorite Australian no-raver Simo Soo, is better than the original, IMO:

3. The #3 spot is tied with every Buck Biloxi song on Live At Saturn Bar and the Biloxi LP Culture Demanufactuer. As Dynamite Hemorrhage said on his podcast, "Buck Biloxi makes The Ramones sound like wizardy prog." Love it.

2.Dope Body's whole album "Lifer" is really good, but this song is my fave from it.

1.Run The Jewels 2 is my fave album of the year for sure. There's a reason it's on all the best ofs this year - it's un-putdownable.

Honorable mentions go to The Great Dismal Swamis, Postcode, Clara Engel, Anklepants, Adam Holtz, Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires, Future Death, Roomrunner, Triathalon, and Grave Mistake Records' Breakout and Asylum. All put out quality tunes this year. Thanks to them, all the artists on the Top Ten list, and all the other awesome bands, singers, and songwriters I've featured on CNQ this year. I don't post it if I don't like it! And also thanks to anybody out there in Internet-land who enjoys my little blog.

Got a Christmas post coming up with some Adam Holtz Christmas tunes and some Christmas-related old 45s you might not have heard before.

Addendum: I totally forgot Protomartyr's "Scum, Rise," which was heavy in my rotation at the beginning of the year.

New Punk From Bandcamp

I'm going thru the little collection of 45s I've amassed in the last couple of years. Cleaning, cataloging, organizing. It's fun. Here soon I'll post some more cool stuff from that collection.

Got some new Adam Holtz coming up too.

Not limited to format tonight, here's some cool new sounds from Bandcamp.

Simo Soo, Sydney's own no-rave partiste (that's a party artiste, and I just made that up, I think), has a new EP out, Sootopia, and will have a new full-length early next year, sez he.

From Michigan's East Grand Record Co.:

The A-F Records This Concerns Everyone comp is out. Great stuff.

From Artificial Head Records in Houston, these guys from Houston have a 7" for sale, limited to 400 on "splattered vinyl":

Courtesy CNQ darlings Grave Mistake Records outta Richmond, VA:

Simo Soo, Postcode, and The Masked Marauders

CNQ's favorite Australian No-Rave artiste Simo Soo is raising money for his new album and a possible tour of the U.S. For $8 on bandcamp you can get a download of a sweet 22 track compilation of unreleased/unavailable Simo Soo tracks recorded from 2009-11. It's available until July 5th then it's "GONE 4 EVA," as Simo sez on his facebook page. I got mine, I hope he comes to Texas!

The Isle of Man's Postcode has a video for their new jam. Good stuff:

I picked up this at ZT Records in Frisco, TX this weekend, for $8. A '60s hoax album courtesy Rolling Stone magazine:

David Dundas: "Jeans On" b/w "Sleepy Serena" (Air/Chrysalis 1976) + New Simo Soo

Loyal CNQers (both of you) may remember I originally started this blog to post songs from 7" vinyl that I could not find elsewhere on the Internet. That gave me an excuse to start a 7" collection, and although I've kept on buying 45s, I haven't posted near as many of them as I should, opting instead for the easy sharing of new music I like courtesy Bandcamp and Soundcloud. Late last year I made an attempt to get back into posting material from 45s with my Record Holder Series, but after a strong start that petered out and I was back to lazily sharing embeds of new tunes.

Anyway, the other night I got out all the 45s I haven't done anything with yet, and put them in a big stack on my desk (it's not /that/ many, maybe 60-70 records). With them staring at me, and not tucked away in a tub with our 12" records, I hope to make a dent in these before I get lazy again. Also, I think I got my levels good with Audacity now so the mp3 below should be in the Goldilocks zone of listenability. Alright, enough jibber jabber -- here's the skinny on tonight's tracks:

According to Wikipedia, Lord David Dundas (b. 1945) is an English musician, actor, and also scores television and films. He's the 3rd son of the Marquis of Zetland, which sounds like some Lord of the Rings stuff but I guess it's real. "Jeans On" was featured in a television commercial for Brutus Jeans and the Wikipedia article is unclear which came first, the ad jingle or the song. I think it was the song but I'm not sure. At any rate, the commercial definetly made the song popular enough so that it became a single, peaking at #3 on the UK charts and #17 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. It's a catchy pop tune, if that's your thing. If catchy 70s pop/ad jingles/songs sampled by Fatboy Slim are not your thing, the song may still get stuck in your head, and make you hate your blue jeans and/or the act of putting them on. My apologies if that occurs after listening to "Jeans On."

I picked this 7" up at the 1/2 Priced Books in Dallas for a cool 49 cents, no sleeve, just the record. As you can see in the pic above, someone wrote "Crazy" on the label with a marker, and another word next to it I can't make out. "Find?" "Fin?" "Fiu?" I dunno.

Brutus Jeans is famous for making a shirt that was popular in the 60s called a "trimfit."

"Sleepy Serena" is the flip and I couldn't find it on the Internet. So, for educational and historical purposes only, here it is. It's a funky pop jam that has a little bit of Bee-Gees and a little bit of Beatles lurking behind it, I think. It's alright but certainly not as catchy "Jeans On."

Here's the Brutus Jeans ad, as well as the album version of "Jeans On," courtesy Youtube:

Meanwhile, back in the 21st century, Sydney's Simo Soo has three new tracks available on Bandcamp called TEARZZZZZZ EP. It's super-cool glitchy, noisey hip-hop, so check it out if that's what you're into.

New Punk Rock Arrivals From Bandcamp y Soundcloud

This was all over the place on the big music sites last week but I can't get enough of it! Check it out if you haven't heard it yet:

If my frequent searches thru Bandcamp's new arrivals section is to be believed, there's some bitchin punk coming out of Spain these days. From Madrid:

From the Basque Country:

From Toronto:

From Sydney, this may be my jam:

From the same Australian cat, this Drake cover is pretty rad: