Archive for the ‘Singles and EPs’ Category

Watch: ‘Smart Mouth’ by CNTS

Posted: 24 January 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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CNTS are back!

The noisy punk band from Los Angeles, CA are back with their second album release for Ipecac Recordings, Thoughts & Prayers (29th March). Pre order/pre save here.

The band features guitarist and producer Mike Crain (Dead Cross, Retox, Festival Of Dead Deer), drummer Kevin Avery (Retox, Planet B) and vocalist Matt Cronk (Qui).

Today, they share a first taste of their second album, the track ‘Smart Mouth’.

Watch the video here:

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Following a devastating car accident in which frontman Matt Cronk lost his vocal cord – couldn’t speak, let alone sing – the band thought they might have to call it a day. Then against the predictions of his doctors, Cronk’s injured vocal cord began to heal and within two months his voice returned, as did CNTS.

“We got together and ran through a song and it sounded good.  We kept playing and my voice held up, sounded cool, and we all felt good playing together.  It was clear immediately that we could do it again, that we’d really missed playing together and we wanted to do it.” says Cronk. “Personally, the experience was a significant marker in my recovery. I got a little teary after that first song.”

Reinvigorated by Cronk’s recovery, CNTS spent the rest of the year hard at work on their new record, Thoughts & Prayers, the title inspired by the banality of our collective reaction to crises. With a great deal of inspiration from their recent challenges, CNTS have channeled several years of frustration and hardship into a well articulated and aggressive statement. Songs such as the aforementioned “Smart Mouth,” and “Thoughts & Prayers,” chronicle Cronk’s pain and anger throughout his various injuries and subsequent recovery. “I Won’t Work For You,” and “Eating You Alive,” deal with the inequity inherent in modern life. “For A Good Time (Don’t Call Her)” is a screed about the age-old theme of fighting with one’s romantic partner.

Guitarist Michael Crain adds, “I really wanted to have SONGS on this record. Hooks. Choruses. Shit I listen to. In all times of confusion or indecision during the making of this album we’d stop and ask ourselves… What would AC/DC do?”

Equal parts catharsis and blood-letting, CNTS as a live entity is an unapologetic display of rage and sex, of belligerence and contempt, a warm gob of spit in the eye, all done with a sarcastic smile.

The future belongs to CNTS.

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Listen: ‘Everybody’s Movin’ by Mannequin Death Squad

Posted: 18 January 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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No preamble, no hype needed – just listen, because it’s ace.

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Listen: ‘Dissent, Shame’ by The Body & Dis Fig

Posted: 17 January 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Ahead of the release of their debut collaborative album Orchards of a Futile Heaven, out February 23rd, The Body & Dis Fig share potent, affecting new single ‘Dissent, Shame.’

The track’s devastating force lies beyond pure noise or abrasive textures, evoking weighty emotions with a minimalist drone dirge that gradually builds into an enchanting choral passage. Suffused with a raw vulnerability and a longing for catharsis, Dis Fig’s voice searches for escape in the midst of oppressive atmospheres as if determined to find relief from guilt. She elaborates on the track: “It’s about the act of abandonment, and the guilt and shame that comes with it. Running away from something, seemingly towards your own safety, but as your conscience picks you apart the entire way.”

Orchards of a Futile Heaven affirms The Body & Dis Fig as skilled sound sculptors who have an exceptional ability to make deeply affecting music, bracing as it is touching, harrowing as it is awe-inspiring. While sampling has long been essential to each, The Body & Dis Fig deftly meld their differing approaches to sampling and creating extreme sounds until the boundaries are entirely blurred. The group transmute weighty emotions into bristling sonic atmospheres, buoyed by Dis Fig’s ethereal vocals. She elaborates: “I love the balance. You could never connect to just a machine as well as you could a human. Which is why the combination is so potent for me. I don’t want to hide. I think nothing connects you more empathetically than another human’s voice.”

The Body & Dis Fig plan to tour throughout the US, UK, and Europe in 2024. Dates and details incoming soon.

Listen to ‘Dissent, Shame’ here:

The Body & Dis Fig are a natural pair. Each has pioneered instantly recognisable worlds of sound all their own that defy any traditional categorisations or boundaries. The Body, Lee Buford and Chip King, continually challenge any conventional conception of metal, collaborating with myriad artists and from the folk-leanings of their work with BIG|BRAVE to their groundbreaking work with the Assembly of Light Choir to the intensity of their collaborations with OAA or Thou.

Dis Fig, aka Felicia Chen, pushes electronic music into dark extremes, from warped DJ sets to avant production, from being a member of Tianzhuo Chen’s performance-art series TRANCE to being the vocalist with The Bug. The Body and Dis Fig find kinship in reimagining what it means to make “heavy music”. Their debut Orchards of a Futile Heaven is the perfect synthesis of two forces, twisting melodicism and intoxicating rhythms, layering a dense miasma of distortion with intense beats and a soaring voice clawing its way towards absolution.

The two found kinship in their desire to find new avenues to make heavy music that looked beyond tropes of metal and electronic music by merging the two. “I always wanted the heavier stuff but I also didn’t really like heavier guitar music,” says Buford. “None of it really felt quite heavy enough to me. A human can’t be as heavy as a machine.”

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Watch: ‘The Heart’ by Lip Critic

Posted: 16 January 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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NYC-based electronic punk band LIP CRITIC, who are no strangers to Aural Aggro, have shared a new song and video, ‘The Heart’.

They may have switched labels and stepped things up a bit, but you couldn’t exactly say they’ve sold out.

Watch the video here:

The video was filmed in a barn in Roxbury, NY, and follows their Partisan debut single ‘It’s The Magic’, which earned them praise from Rolling Stone (‘Song You Need To Know’), NME (“on their way to becoming the next great NYC band”), Paste (“an apocalyptic wasteland of NYC’s best underground punk”) and more.

‘The Heart’ is a high-speed train of delirious percussion (two drummers!) and wonderfully demented electronic samples, weaving in and out of frontman Bret Kaser’s lyrics that inquire into the state of spiritual marketplace and the isolating results of consumption. It’s an exhilarating and singular piece of hardcore electronic punk, with Lip Critic using a broad palette of only the most extreme hues of emotion, each marked by a distinctive danceable mania.

Fresh off dates with Screaming Females for their last-ever tour and shows in London and Pitchfork Paris, Lip Critic will tour extensively in 2024. Their first-ever headline tour will kick off this summer. Prior to that, the band will play a special hometown show on 22 Feb at Elsewhere (Zone 1) in Brooklyn and stop at SXSW for a string of shows.

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Credit: Justin Villar

Sea Gods – Are You Here Now?

Posted: 15 January 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

The fact that Jack Flint and Carl Donoghue had been in a band called the Tango Pirates before forming Sea Gods with Marty Taylor isn’t entirely shocking: continuing the nautical themes of the bands’ names, there’s something of the buccaneering roustabout to the verses of this, the trio’s debut single with the core riff being built around an up-and-down fret run that has a kind of surfy, rockabilly vibe. Not that, despite its uptempo delivery, it’s not some shanty knees-up, but more a song about being all at sea, as they outline the song’s meaning as being ‘about the difficult times we’re facing, thanks to increasing hardship, and encourages us to live life in the present to the fullest.’

But if the verses are a shade indie with a roguish dash, the choruses spring to life with a gut-busting explosion of punk energy, and it’s here that the blend of frustration and positivity both come to the fore, with exhilarating results, calling to mind ‘Babylon’s Burning’ by The Ruts in both riff and energy.

There can’t be many bands – or that much else doing – in Clitheroe, being a small town in Lancashire. But this is the kind of place where like-minded people form strong bonds and dream of escape as they vent their frustrations. ‘Are You Here Now?’ finds Sea Gods channelling that energy into something raw, fiery, real – and maybe this could be their ticket out.

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Watch: ‘Seance’ by Hammok

Posted: 12 January 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Aural Aggro faves Hammok follow a brace a monster EPs – Jumping/Dancing/Fighting and  Now I Know with a new single, with ‘Seance’ providing the latest taste of their upcoming debut album look how long lasting everything is moving for one. The single is served up with an explosive one-take music video produced in the childhood home of vocalist Tobias Maxwell Osland.

‘Seance’ shows the band’s most direct side yet. The song barely rounds out two and a half minutes and at that time gives you a masterclass in hardcore chorus flair. The soundscape is controlled by a constantly forward-propelling drum machine and a metallic synth bass where vocalist Tobias Osland is given plenty of room to dominate the listener’s eardrum.

With fragmented images inspired by horror films and occult traditions, ‘Seance’ brings out a deeply dark and disturbing reality where the protagonist finds themselves in their worst nightmare. A feeling of being haunted or persecuted, a life where your reality is terrorized. Where it all began, in a SEANCE.

Check it here:

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Watch: ‘Violently Ill’ by Polevaulter – album, tour dates, and Gaza benefit performance announced

Posted: 9 January 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Standing alone in the cold north, militant DIY dance punk duo, Polevaulter toil and labour to explore the limits of underground achievement. Known the land over for their hypnotic live performances home and away, the Northern noisemakers have built from nothing something few can argue with.

The sonic assault the two create is almost arrogant, fathered from the marriage of seismically sharp bass and loin-grinding beats. The words are quipped and brayed atop the aural landscape. They are boastful, accusing, repellent and inviting, they question and skewer the veins of masculinity, sexuality, the order of things, the music industry and the miserable reality of the North. Toured with JOHN, shared a stage with Thank, Mandy Indiana, Pink Turns Blue, Bambara, A Place To Bury Strangers, VR Sex, and others.

New Polevaulter single ‘Violently Ill’, is as the title suggests, a hard-hitting dark and fiercely off-kilter slab of awesome sickly noise and follows recent acclaim for the duos work from the likes of The Needle Drop’s Anthony Fantano and Louder Than War. The track combines pulsating beats and glitchy electronics with intense repeating shouts to create an intoxicating and exhilarating experience. With the track, Polevaulter announce their debut album ‘Hang Wave’ for release on 26th January and UK/EU tour dates starting February.

On ‘Violently Ill’, Polevaulter’s Jon Franz explains- “I created the track out of a sample I found from a free library, it was inspired by our trip to Tallinn in April. I demoed the track pretty much as is as soon as we got back, and Dan liked the sampling a lot, so we moved forwards. The lyrics were the first things I thought out at practice, and I like the fact that it has more sparse vocals than most of our tracks, gives our music chance to shine. Its maybe my favourite song on the album.”

Watch the video here:

Alongside the single release, Polevaulter are set to perform the debut album on repeat for 8 hours straight from 4pm to midnight on 13th January via a livestream to raise funds for the Gaza Sunbirds, a para cycling team based in the Gaza Strip. The team is currently providing emergency food parcels and aid to families sheltering around the Gaza Strip. For more info and to donate visit: https://www.justgiving.com/page/polevaulterforgazasunbirds

Polevaulter will tour the UK and EU as follows:

Jan 31st – The Fenton, Leeds – Album launch

Feb 2nd – Hatch, Sheffield

Feb 3rd – Little Buildings, Newcastle

Feb 6th – New Adelphi, Hull

Feb 7th – The Lounge, Manchester

Feb 8th – Old Blue Last, London

Feb 9th – Bear Cave, Bournemouth w/ JOHN

Feb 10th – Craufurd Arms, Milton Keynes w/ JOHN

Feb 13th – DAda, Toulouse, France

Feb 14th – Le Mans, France

Feb 15th – TBA, France

Feb 16th – Melody Maker, Rennes, France

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West Wickhams – Vivre Sa Vie

Posted: 8 January 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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1st December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

My introduction to West Wickhams was the day their debut single ‘He’s Acquired a New Face’ crashed my inbox in the Autumn of 2019. Something about it absolutely gripped me. Something about it was strange and different. And of course, it’s no longer available anywhere. But it was the only thing they had out at the time, and for various reasons, I didn’t get wind of subsequent releases, the first of which arrived almost a year later, and now it turns out I’ve got some catching up to do, as it turns out they’ve knocked out not one, but two five-track EPs since June 2022. But first, Vivre Sa Vie. A nine track EP!!!

Admittedly, when most of the tracks are around two to two-and-a-half minutes in length, it’s definitely got an EP running time, and would easily fit on a 10” record, but still.

It’s a joy to discover that while the songwriting has evolved and expanded, they’re still magnificently idiosyncratic, and still revel in every layer of echo and reverb going. ‘I am Sparkling Cyanide’ is a mid-tempo shimmery tune that’s almost poppy, bringing together early 80s synth pop with a dash of The Jesus and Mary Chain, all spun through a shoegaze filter. But ‘The Maddening Crowd’ is a piston-pumping blast of fucked-up psychedelic surf rock with an agitated bassline and relentless cheapy drum machine creating a rigid spine, over which even cheaper synth notes tinkle and twinkle.

With its nagging bassline and monotonous programmed beat ‘Carla Suspiria’ plunges into haunting early 80s goth territory, its heavy atmospherics reminiscent of early Danse Society. The vocals – like the guitar – are almost lost in a cavernous reverb. The atmosphere gets darker still on ‘I’m Spinning I’m Spinning’: the fat bass sound is pure Cure and listening to it feels like floating in space – detached, disorientated, out of body.

‘At the Cinema’ transforms the mundane into a heightened emotional experience, channelling Joy Division all the way, even down to the sounds of breaking glass.

The large number of tracks is by no means an indication that they’ve just bunged everything on there just because they’ve got it: Vivre Sa Vie is quality all the way, and they’ve utilised the space afforded by the longer format to structure the sequence in a way that feels like there’s a flow and a certain linearity, punctuating the really bleak gloomers with the poppier efforts.

The final track, ‘Damned Defiant!’ crashes in on a barrage of beefy percussion countered by chiming synths, and it’s a total assimilation of The Cure’s catalogue, and it’s rendered so magically, and in the space of two minutes and nine seconds that it can only be described as doomy goth-pop perfection.

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The Supplements – Moving On

Posted: 7 January 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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15th December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s quite refreshing to find an EP with only three tracks. At the risk of coming on like a nostalgia sap, it takes me back to the late 80s and early 90s, when I first got into music and buying records, when 7” EPs would often contain three tracks. There was something tidy about the format. Then again, a lot of 80s releases would feature two tracks on the 7” and add an additional B-side to the 12”, which was also pretty tidy – before the days of extended remixes and CD EPs which would tediously pack out the space with multiple versions of the single, none of which were often worth the bother, but of course, collectors would feel compelled to buy all of the different formats and the single would achieve a higher chart placing thanks to cynical marketing.

The Supplements, from Fort Lauderdale, describe their sound as ‘moody post-punk meets riff-lead indie rock’, and while post-punk is my thing, it’s the indieness that draws me to this release, and nit only on account of the EP format and the fact the lead track is a mere 2:44, with the longest song being not much over three minutes.

While my loathing of Morrissey and a general sense of ‘outgrowing’ The Smiths in recent years may have eclipsed my one-massive love for the band, there’s no denying that they were the absolute kings of the perfectly succinct single, and there’s clearly an element of that tight songwriting in the zero-fat brevity on the songs The Supplements serve up here.

But another aspect of the band’s sound which is utterly compelling is that darker post-punk element, which is pure Interpol. Now, after hearing all the raving about Interpol being the new Joy Division, I was sorely disappointed the day I picked up their first two albums. But once I had come to terms with the fact that the critics were just wrong in their reviews, I came to love those albums, and the ones which followed (apart from the last one, which is toss). And it’s that dark but jangly thing – think ‘Say Hello to the Angels’, with the kind of descending runs which can be found on ‘Slow Hands’ – which The Supplements do so well.

‘Another Day’, the lead track, boasts a driving bass, and Ted O’Connell’s vocals are pitched around the baritone of Paul Banks’. ‘I Can’t Have Everything’ is defined by a choppy guitar underpinned by a chunky bass groove, and the last few bars seem to lean heavily on the intro to ‘Slow Hands’. ‘Different Light’ – nothing to do with The Bangles – again brings some nagging guitars reminiscent of the intro to ‘Roland’ and the mid-section of ‘The New’ and a strong rhythm section, where a strolling bass holds tight against some urgent drumming. With Moving On, The Supplements deserve to be moving up too, because this is pure quality.

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Circolo Vizioso – Choppy

Posted: 7 January 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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5th January 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

While I’m still sifting through December’s releases – it seems as if 90% of 2023’s releases landed on 15th December – I’m most conscious that 2024 hasn’t only arrived, but is blasting forwards at a rocket pace. The first week has evaporated already. Where does time go? Where does life go? I find myself contemplating these questions daily, weekly, not as part of some existential fret, but simply as I jostle with the everyday contradiction of the so-called work/life balance. For the majority, the very concept is a myth. They work, they work, they work… and then they die. This is the reality of contemporary capitalism, and apparently, we need to shut up and deal with it.

I shall park the political rage momentarily, while addressing this. Here we have ‘Choppy’, the new single release from Berlin punk rock duo Circolo Vizioso, pitched as ‘a high-octane single spawned of depression and failed love story and… the first taste of their debut album Verrueckt (out March 1st) and as showcasing ‘their unique brand of high-intensity, lyric-driven punk, created with electric violin, guitar and drums. On this album, Circolo Vizioso wrestles with isolation, lack of social and human contact, and a hunger for music and art, which we all felt during recent lockdowns.’ It’s also pitched as being for fans of Sonic Youth, The Black Angels, Fugazi, Nirvana, Buzzcocks, Shellac, Gang of Four, Schleimkeim, Pisse, Abwaert, Old Time Relijun. Of the bands among those with which I’m familiar (It’s a falsehood that even the most knowledgeable music critics have heard every band, however hard they might pretend it’s so) this is all positive, and these are the kind of bands whose sound provide a sonic template for exploring some dark and complex emotions and navigating challenging situations and a messed-up society. Music is more than mere entertainment: it’s an outlet, a way of dealing with difficult things, of exploring and working through them, and on the evidence of this release, Circolo Vizioso unapologetically channel these difficulties into their creative outlet.

‘Choppy’ is as raw and primitive as it comes. Rough and scratchy, it feels like a demo – but to pretty it up with production would be to strip it of its primal immediacy. Listening to those first few bars, I’m reminded of early Pavement, in every way: it’s rattly, ragged indie, cleanish guitars fuzzing as a condenser mic on a portable cassette recorder overloads. It’s heavy with melancholy, and the tempo switches and drags and races. And the accompanying video – ultra-saturated, blurry – is an eye-bleeder which perfectly mirrors the mood and the no-fi stylings. The violin makes for an unusual slant, bringing further tension and scrapey noise to the dysfunctional party.

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