The new year's starting really well, January's been a really fructuous
month in terms of punk music and this RAF compilation got a lot of
killer tracks in store for you all little thrill seekers. A lot of
hardcore punk, but not only, and if you're patient enough to listen
until the end there are a few "outside the box" surprises there for
you.
Seventeen bands hailing from all over the planet, from the US of course
but also from Australia, Italy, France, Greece, Spain, Holland, Norway
and Japan...
I'm trying to keep as international as possible while not avoiding the
great stuff coming from the land of the free.
N,J'Oi!
01 - Insane Urge - There's a World 02 -
Assistert Sjølmord - Kontroll 03 - Invertebrates -
Red Lake Earth 04 - Lumpen - Renuncia a tu vida 05 -
Foil - Peruvian Coke 06 - Jailer - Sexual
Janitor 07 - Counter Control - The World is Burning Up 08
- Comunione - Esca 09 - Glands - Break Me 10 -
Piss Kinks - Fight I Can't Win 11 - Rampage! -
Notion of Elite 12 - Split System - Hit me 13 -
ΜΠΡΙΤΖΟΛΙΤΣΕΣ - ΚΟΥΡΑΔΟΚΑΣΤΡΟ - Shitcastle 14 -
Thatcher's Snatch - We're Going to Hell 15 -
Boucan - French Manucure 16 - Dyatlov - Death
Machine - Factory 17 - Gotou - Wet 背
A lot of hardcore punk in this one (as usual) but also some post punk halfway through and some cool noise-rock at the end. There are mostly bands from the US but also bands from Germany, Spain, Romania, Hungary, Finland, Singapore and even a Japanese one singing in Esperanto!
I'm working on the "Best Of 2021" episode, stay tuned for a condensed version of the best of 2021 noise!
N,J'Oi!
01 - Glands - Neurasthenia 02 - Aihotz - Lunula 03 - Peoples Temple - M16 04 - Hot Load - Hot Load 05 - Pseudo Reality - Pseudo Reality 06 - Cold Brats - Down By Law 07 - Discreet - Dead Man's Line 08 - Koprolit - Végtisztesség 09 - Liiek - Object 10 - Mop Buckets - Happy 11 - Smut - Side Piece 2 12 - Socio La Difekta - Nur unu ekzisto 13 - Tensö - Te Eliminaràn 14 - Grins - Breeding Morons 15 - Black Beach - Laugh Riot
A short one today about this band from Kyoto, Japan, called
LLRR(pronounced "lew-lew-low-low").
Featuring the vocalist ofO Summer Vacation
(whose first album should be out very soon), the guitarist of
Sizenkai no Okite, Word, One and No Key and
the drummer of
Otori, Worst Taste and
O Summer Vacation
(as often with Japanese bands it gets very difficult to track their online
homes), the trio has a wealth of experience in the field of bouncy,
high-pitched punk that Japan is so good at delivering.
Released on the Tokyo-based label
Call And Response, LLRR's debut tape is a little gem of what I find a very typical kind of
Japanese punk rock. There is something about very high pitched female
vocals in the Japanese scene, I've written before about
a few of these bands
(mostly on the hardcore punk side) and I tend to enjoy listening to them
even if the vocals usually get on my nerves at some point.
LLRR is all about frantic rhythms, bouncy melodies and controlled chaos.
They're far from reaching the total madness of fastcore female
fronted bands (check my post about
NO NO NO) that have been destroying eardrums for decades in basement shows all
over the archipelagos but they do manage to turn chaos (or at least what
one might call a nervous overexcitement edging with nervous breakdown)
into music.
Thanks to
the mix made by the band
to present their various influences to their listeners, I am able to name
a few bands that are probably much more relevant (and much less well
known) than Melt Banana that any website in need of inspiration
will quote over and over again when it comes to Japan and screaming ladies.
And that's how that, on top on discovering that these guys like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Drive Like Jehu and a lot of super weird electronic and cheesy pop stuff, I discovered Gaji (no wave/punk from the 90s) that makes me wanna dig deeply into the 90s Japanese art-rock/noise scene, the fascinating Californians of Death Sentence: Panda! (and indescribable mix of Korean folk music and No-wave), the psychedelic madness of the instrumental kuruucrew and the groovy art-rock of Otori (in which LLRR's drummer also plays). And indeed I can really hear how all these bands fit together somewhere in the band tracks... Yes LLRR is arty but punk, groovy but frantic, "experimental" and weird but mastered and under control... this band is indeed many things and you will get you dose of No Wave / Post-punk if that's what you're into.
So if, like me, you consider Japan to be a breeding ground for fascinating but somewhat incomprehensible and, above all, faraway bands, any opportunity is a good one to dive into this parallel world... so just do it!
Here comes another batch of straight-from-the-oven punk, hardcore,
post-punk and whatever other genres you can fit in-between and around
those.
As usual these nineteen bands come from all over the planet, this month
we got three from Italy, two from Sweden, three from the UK, one from
Norway, one from Indonesia, one from Japan, one from Colombia, one from
Spain, one from Belgium, two from Australia, one from Germany and only
three from the US (I don't think I ever had such a low ratio of American
bands in any RAF compilation before).
A lot of raw stuff with a bit of a rough sound, I hope you'll like
it!
N,J'Oi!
01 - Reaksi - Tidak Ada Manusia Ilegal 02 -
Sloi- Sloi 03 - Candy Apple - Sweet Dreams of
Violence 04 - Posy - Rerun 05 - Golpe - Non
Piegarti 06 - Alambrada - Ilegal 07 - Presagio-
Antes Era Divertido 08 - MoE - Tephra 09 -
Cutters - Modern Problems 10 - Pink Room - Losing 11
- Maladia - Evil Eye 12 - X2000 - Apagando Incendios 13
- Spleen - Flower Basket 14 - LLRR - 週末のフール 15
- Kattpiss - A4-liv 16 - Waste Man - The Siren 17
- Health Plan - Post Traumatic Growth 18 - Italia 90 -
Declare 19 - Bitch Diesel - Hail
If you're old school you can of course download the whole thing
HERE(I like old school)
I really start to enjoy doing these little write ups about Japanese
bands, it's a real challenge to get proper information and I love
it.
No No No are a trio from Ibaraki, Japan, they started in 2009/2010
(taking influences from the Swedish bandNödslakt, maybe after they saw them live or met them, not clear but I read
something about it), released a live tape, had a break of several years
for personal/job reasons, got back together and have been seriously
rocking for four years or something now. Sakai, the drummer, is
also involved in
Kili Kili Villa, a
label
and
webzine
covering the DIY scene, and in
Vogos, another band in which drumming does not sound challenging at all.
No No No made the cover and were interviewed in El Zine #47 (THE punk
zine in Japan, you can find a few old issues in
pdf on archive.org
if you're interested and read Japanese), if anyone got a link I'm interested.
Ok let's give it a try!
No No No's four-track demo
is the only release of the band's first period (roughly one year long
between 2009 and 2010). It's obviously a live take but it does
sound pretty good.
The trio delivers some classic Japanese hardcore punk, a bit shaky but
full of energy and reminiscent of the classics that everyone quotes when
it comes to Japan (The Comes,
Lip Cream
etc...) even if it doesn't really sound similar, but above all No No No recalls another female-fronted band from Ibaraki, the excellent
悲鳴
(Himei)
which was active around the same time.
More than seven years later (early 2018), No No No self-releases
Cutting Edge, a ten-track CD (whose artwork makes me think a lot of
the Little Prince for some reasons).
Based on the first track only you could think that the trio took it off
exactly where they left it so many years ago with a not-so-fast classic
kind of hardcore punk, but, as the following songs quickly show it, the
tempo has increased "a little bit".
You see speed, fastness, "velocity" (or whatever you wanna call it) is a
state of mind in punk, there is the "normal fast", the "super fast", the
"ripping fast" and the "insanely fast" (and probably others for that
matter)... and the one we're facing today is probably close to the
insanely fast level, the one you mostly meet in genre bearing barbaric
names like grindcore or power violence (or quite simply fastcore). And of
course when you got a Japanese female-fronted band playing at that speed
there is only name that can pop in your mind:
Melt Banana
of course!
Yes yes yes Melt Banana... a band that totally destroyed the
limits of the mental universe the word music was filling in my then
teenager brain, many years ago now...
But Cutting Edge is not just about super power-violence-fast
tracks, there is also the slower and very good
Sensitive Song whose "melodic" vocals are pleasantly surprising,
the mid-tempo instrumental Shadow, the almost 2-minute long
No No No which starts like an anthem and explodes in a more
"conventional" hardcore punk way as well as
Vanished (Into the City), the last track, whose slow and "scary"
bassline beautifully concludes the album.
To be honest I've found this album a lot more surprising and enjoyable
than what I was expecting, it's a good record!
A bit later in 2018 got out
Live Fast, the first No No No 7", released by
悲観レーベル (Hikan), a label run by one of the member of
悲鳴
(Himei).
Eight tracks that finally allow the band to demonstrate their mastery of
speed and anger, tracks that benefit from the best recording quality the
band has had access to so far and that are, in the end, more than a
demonstration but a proper lesson in technical mastery.
Technical mastery yes, but not at the expense of spontaneity and real
listening pleasure, No No No has perfectly understood the
importance of "breaks", of pauses to let breath, of the "low" intensity
parts that make the "high" intensity ones even higher and more efficient,
in one word the importance of carving in full and hollow.
And that's what totally blows me away in this record: ok it's insanely
fast and angry but it's so much more than that! It's diverse, it's
"melodic", it's sad and desperate but most of all it's not boring for a
sec. I mean listen to the beautiful break of Live Fast, to the bass
break of No End In Sight and of course to the so beautiful and
surprising Upset which recalls the 90s grunge / Riot
Grrrl scene...
I'm definitely impressed... I don't think I've ever heard
something like that.
2019: No No No,経血(Kei-Ketsu)
and Eyescream (to not be mistaken with the indonesian or russian bands of the same name), three furious female-fronted hardcore punk bands from the Ibaraki
and Miyagi areas, team up on a three-way split released by
Break The Records
and
Foad Records
and called
Croon A Lullaby
(and I absolutely love the cover artwork).
You should absolutely check out the whole record as all bands are quite
good but I will only focus on the one I'm interested in today if you don't
mind.
Well I didn't think it was possible but it really does sound like the
trio is playing faster than ever (these guys won't stop astonishing me).
What can I say?
Yes it's faster, rawer, crazier and probably better than ever!
Four tracks for a total of less than four minutes and a half, I think I
can say that No No No know how to keep it nice and short. And once
again it's well balanced, the breaks are just where they should be, the
"insanely fast" parts are absolutely insane and just long enough and there
is even a beautiful, but short, sung part on Silver...
It's just super good... once again...
(the Fynal Tokyo project is an initiative of the punk
photographerTeppei Miki)
The Indonesian label
Gerpfast Record
released this
Raw Live Fast Tape
in summer 2019 and it's exactly as described, it's a raw live recording of
a bloody fast band. I'm not a big fan of live recordings but this one at
least has the merit of showing (once again) that the band's speed is not a
studio affair and that seeing this band live can only be a mystical
experience. 12 minutes and 39 seconds, that's a decent show length.
I'm glad I've wandered around that page though, thanks to the label
recommendations I've discovered another Japanese gem,
the all-female bandOtoboke Beaver
from Kyoto (don't dare tell me that you're not impressed by
THIS!)... damn it looks like I have a lot of catching up to do on recent Japanese
punk...
2021: here is what is described as No No No's first full-length;
released on tape by
Gerpfast Record
(with a collage artwork by
Luna Kadima
from the Spanish bandSatélite)
and on CD by
Kili Kili Villa
(with
a different cover). It will also probably be their final release as they announced the end
of the band in December 2020 (I hope I understood that right).
The label announced really clearly that there was no digital version
(for now or at all, I'm not sure) so as surprising as it can sound in 2021
it means we will have to do with the two tracks (out of fifteen) which
were posted on YT for now...
And despite a small line-up change (new bassist), it doesn't sound like No No No has decided to give up and sell out...
Here comes the new compilation of punk-related new (good) stuff from the last month or so.
Following my last month "policy" of trying to discover and share bands from non-english speaking countries RAF#21 features bands from the US and the UK as usual but also from
Japan, France (2 bands), Indonesia, Czech Republic, Spain (3 bands!), Colombia and Germany...
20 killers for Easter!
N,J'Oi!
01 - Ataque Zerø - Destrucción 02 - Canal Irreal - Pestes 03 - Electric Chair - Bastards 04 - Hasss - I Don't Care 05 - Toads - Chumhum 06 - Crotch Rot - Fucked Your Daughter 07 - Bibione - Gloves 08 - Dead Meat - Son Of Sam 09 - Crown Court - Sect 59 10 - Nafra - Txarnego!!! 11 - Sublevacion - Laberinto 12 - Trigger Cut - solid state 13 - Mon Autre Groupe - La Joie 14 - Illiterates - 11 Born Here 15 - Esperanza - Identity Through Consumption 16 - Cunter - This Throat's for Smokin' 17 - The Juakinners - Jurasik Punk 18 - Valse Noot - Angst 19 - Predator - Never Anything Before 20 - NO NO NO - Can't live in the past
And you can of course listen to all past shows on
Mixcloud!
The other day, as I was religiously listening to my recently purchased
bootleg version of the first two Stalin's LPs (the excellent
Stop Jap
and虫 (Mushi)) and as the outside world looked colder and gloomier than
ever through my window, I decided to have a look at what Japan was offering in terms
of hardcore punk nowadays (Ok I've talked about
Milk
a few months ago but that's all)... well at least try to have a look, because it soon became clear that it's quite difficult to dig properly into the Japanese scene without speaking the language at all...
Anyway I found this nice new
Demo
by a band called 鏡(Kagami which means Mirror) from Tokyo
and it was not very difficult as they were nice enough to write almost
everything in english (thanks!). And I quickly understood why when I realized that
the band members are strongly connected with the international world
of punk and that Kagami is not their first attempt to make it
noisier.
I know I miss many information and may mix things up a little bit (still
that language issue) but from what I understood Zie, the bass
player is also playing in
Klonns (they just released a 7'' on Black Hole)
and has
several solo projects, the singer played in bands called Yep and Do Not and the
guitar player,
named Kohei, played in
Rashomon
(a US band based in D.C) and is
also a visual artist who's worked on several punk bands' artwork (Fried Egg LP's cover artwork for example).
One thing's for sure, the Tokyo quartet knows their US hardcore
classics on their fingertips! Within six tracks (including a Government Issue cover) the band shows all their love for this era
and it works out well (because I love it too!).
The structures, the energy, the raw sound... everything is there to
take us back to the hardcore punk "golden days".
Ok you'll tell me that there are dozens of bands which drop the same kind of shit on bandcamp everyday (and you'll be right)... but I don't know I like this one...
Maybe because this demo really sounds like a young band demo, not like all
these perfectly played American demos which pop out every other
week and are just another side project of "semi-professional" members
of the US hardcore scene...
No... here I hear the hesitations of a band which begins, the
approximations of young musicians who are still a bit "clumsy" with
their instruments... so yes it lacks "sharpness" and "cleanliness" sometimes but it has nevertheless all the charm of a sound
in construction...
It's a demo after all. The beginning of something which could be soon
extremely enjoyable...
A work in progress in fact... and what's cuter than watching it grow?
Be reassured young fans of noise and fury, the new delivery of hot punk
and hardcore has just arrived!
This time, and from now on, I've tried to include as much killer songs
from bands based in non-english speaking countries as I could. I feel that
the UK, US and Aussie scenes are already well known and covered and the
rest of the world deserves our attention too. Of course that doesn't mean
that I'm going to deprive you of the best of the English-speaking
scene.
So RAF#20 features bands from the US and the UK as usual but also from
Japan (three bands!), France (two bands), Morocco, South Korea, Vietnam,
Portugal, the Netherlands and Mexico...
So many good releases over the past month or so! It was hard to keep it
as short as usual so this compilation is a bit longer with not less than
22 tracks!
N,J'Oi!
01 - Taqbir - Sma3 02 - Headcheese - Talk To The
Therapist 03 - Escumalha 714 - Data fascistas 04 -
Peacemaker - See You Dead 05 - Fairytale - Device of
Panic 06 - Slant - Enemy 07 - Youth in Pain -
Love Letter 08 - Education - Juvenile 09 -
Gỗ Lim - Cac ban đung nghiem 10 - Sarcasm - Digital
Colony 11 - Public Body - Ask Me Later 12 -
The Smog - Set In Stone 13 - Anti-Feds -
Warmongers 14 - Tizzi - All Day I Work For Little Money 15
- Erieza Royal & The Summary Lynch - 征服されざる者 The
Unconquered 16 - 鏡(Kagami) - Inside Me 17 -
Prision Postumo - Isla De Vagabundos 18 - Turquoise -
Arbeit 19 - Trash Ferraris - Don't Need It 20 -
The Stools - Life's Hard Lover 21 - Liquids - You're
a Punk 22 - Dyatlov - Wound Man
And you can of course listen to all past shows on
Mixcloud!
