BASIC BITCHES – Relatable Content EP

Basic Bitches began as a band in 2014 but it would be another four years until a stable line up was established. That line up featuring Naomi Scott (gtr/vox) and Krystal Grow (drums) entered the recording studio soon after and the resulting EP ‘Relatable Content’ was released to an unsuspecting world in the Spring of 2019.

Its four numbers offer the finest in hard garage rock sounds, recorded in such a way that the loud end of the drums and the fuzz from the guitar give off a very natural and live sound. Unlike some similar bands you might come across in your quests for relatively lo-fi goodness, though, there’s just enough polish to ensure Basic Bitches don’t ever sound like they’ve been recorded on a portable cassette deck from the far end of the room.

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THE MAD DOCTORS – No Waves, Just Sharks

Three years on from ‘Snake Oil Superscience’, Brooklyn’s Mad Doctors mean business on their second full length ‘No Waves, Just Sharks’. On this album, the band truly exploit their b-movie and pulp fiction interests, not only in the artwork, but also by enlisting various friends to drop various spoken word passages between the tracks, giving the impression they’ve mined the vaults for unknown media samples. In some ways, this is better than using actual samples, in that the clips are tailor made and – perhaps, rather more importantly in this case – it also saves the band and label time and money on clearance rights. Fans of bands within the King Pizza stable might even recognise a few of the voices as belonging to Laura Gwynn and Riley Zeisig (Sirs&Madams) and the whole of label-mates The Rizzos.

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BLACK INITIALS – EP

black initials epRamsgate is a seaside town in east Kent, once famous for the docks, its hovercraft trips and a town horse. It still boasts an impressive harbour, but often gets overlooked in favour of Margate – its arguably more famous brother – situated just along the coast. Ramsgate also home to alt-rock two-piece Black Initials, a band whom bring a mixture of garage based sounds on their debut EP.   Continue reading

THE MOONSHINERS – EP

16265162_705722059610694_9173415247525155349_nArmed with a love of Rocket From The Crypt and (the) Misfits, Peterborough punk ‘n’ rollers The Moonshiners are set to slap you in the jaw with a potent, riff-heavy sound on their untitled 2017 EP . Their self-financed release serves up half an album’s worth of raw and dirty noise and couples the best riffs with a few top-notch hooks, which results in an unmissable listen for fans of the style.

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BLEEDERS – Gash EP

bleeders-gash-cassetteIn the run up to the release of this cassette, Bleeders had been steadily building a following on the live circuit on their home turf of Pennsylvania and the surrounding areas. That sort of makes sense since they have a sound that would surely work much better live; on record, their no-frills, no-wave, distorted, zero budget approach is hellishly ugly. So much so, that it makes label mates The Meltaways seem like a manufactured, multi-million dollar, radio groomed pop rock trio by direct comparison. The recording of ‘Gash’ is so raw and unrelentingly grotesque, it borders on being unlistenable. Looking at it another way, it’s so hard going, that’s an achievement in itself.

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