Climbing The Leafy Rat Columns

Why not bliss out this Sunday on a West Australian done good? Rat Columns is David West, who you might recognise from the excellent Rank/Xerox. The dude has been hunkered down in San Francisco for some time, and whilst his presence has been well and truly felt, it's his more heartfelt kraut yearnings with Rat Columns that West truly hits his stride. The trio have a new album out on RIP Society, Leaf, which you can grab here. It's a mixture of twanged out New Wave myopics and longsighted C86-aping jams, conducive to impromptu interpretive dances with a goblet of red wine in the lounge room at 2 in the morning... So that's our Sunday sorted then... And you might notice some synth lines coming to play here - courtesy of man-of-all-trades Mikey Young.

Falling Behind The Lace Curtain

We meet once again, Mikey Young. Seriously, do you not have a home to go to? Always loitering with ne-er do wells. Making any old racket, as long as it is loud and interesting. Sure, you pal around with your buddies (in this case, Dave West (he of the excellent Rank/Xerox) and Total Control alum James Vinciguerra). Sure, you've parted your hair and brushed the dandruff from your shoulder pads, washed the gunk out of your eyes and brushed your teeth. You even mince around with a genteel presence like Lace Curtain. But we know you, Mikey. You and your brethren are responsible for garage sweat, punk desperation, the itch of abandon. No veneer of hypnotic trance will hide the fact that rock is fused to your soul...

That said, Lace Curtain is enough of an about-turn to irk your purist acolytes, turning from you and your new persona as a personal affront, whilst garnering a fresh set of feverish do-gooders to your cause. Your junkie-centric need to create music is truly something, and with Falling/Running, Lace Curtain's new 12" coming out through Mexican Summer, you and your cronies have chiseled out something that embellishes the kraut rhythmics whilst submerging into glistening pools of synth. Free may you roam, kemo sabe.

Pre-order Falling/Running here.

Spraying Paints Of Brutality

When Iceage's New Brigade hit in 2011, the face of post-punk was brutally gutter-stomped. For too long bands were labelling themselves post-punk due to the fact that they had sharp, angular guitar tones, regardless of whether they played disco synth or shiny happy themes, all the while glossing the fuck out of it all and force-feeding it to the masses. One of post-punk's most enduring factors is that it is more proficient musically, more complex, yet still upholding elements of the punk idiom. New Brigade was gritty, nihilistic, hungry, rabid, disaffected, infected - and whilst you wouldn't claim to have never heard this style of music played before, it was the confidence and arrogance that such noise was flung in the faces of all and sundry that made them an altogether exciting prospect.

Listening to Austin trio Spray Paint's eponymous LP (out through S-S Records), it's the first time I have felt that same rush outside of Copenhagen for quite some time (Holograms and Lower also kill). Two guitars and drums, noxious maelstrom. This is Wire and Gang of Four on nitrous oxide. This is Arab On Radar speeding through a night of rack and ruin. This is Saccharine Trust eating glass and laughing themselves to sleep. This is Rank/Xerox in the Twilight Zone. This is Spray Paint. And its goddamn killer.

You can and most definitely should get Spray Paint here.

Spray Paint - Jimi's Apartment
Spray Paint - Lap Swimming

Zulus Will Break Your Face - That Is Their Way

The playing field for discordant, disaffected post-punk raconteurs has certainly got crowded of late. We have been advocates of Copenhagen teens Iceage in the past, and others such as Total Control and Rank/Xerox have brought out stellar albums recently. Now add Londoners Zulu to the mix, whose fifteen minute annihilation of a cassette Way Of The Zulu raced out the Stroll On Records doors. That's what you get for tapping the vein of a zeitgeist and only making 100 tapes, I guess. It isn't as immediate or revolutionary as its contemporaries' offerings, yet hopefully there is enough going round to get some re-release thing up and running, because there are some killer tunes amongst these 9 songs. The Clash references thrown in their direction are not just because of the quintet's looks either, especially on 'We're Watching You'. it has been lambasted by some as losing some impetus due to its lack of variety - but this is fucking punk, people! Plus at under twenty minutes, its a heady non-stop session of eating glass. When your opening track is called 'Annoying Song' and begins with a lament that the band members themselves are "a bunch of pricks", and it sounds like he actually means it, you know that this is true DIY punk. Circa 79 too - this is more nostalgic than the other cream of the crop, and it works in Zulu's favour.

You can stream Way Of The Zulu below - we'll wait with bated breath to see if Stroll On push more of these onto the salivating public, or someone else picks up the slack. Either way, this is an exciting introduction.



Zulu - Sistine Chapel
Zulu - Annoying Song
Zulu - Bloody & Rare

Posting Rank/Xerox's Punk

San Francisco has to be one of the best places in the world music-wise right now, especially if you love your guitar rock dirty, dingy and fun. But not all is fine and dandy. One of the best albums of 2011 came not from a garage group but some disgruntled guys that, alongside The Men, Iceage and Total Control, proved that some of the best music comes from the darkest spaces - and that post-punk is far from dead, despite many fuckwits' attempts to make it so. Rank/Xerox's self-titled debut is acid-tinged angularity, acid saliva and discord. What's not to love? Nothing, for this album, just like those mentioned above, have distilled what the genre's progenitors (read: Wire, Gang Of Four, Mission Of Burma) gave birth to, and adding so much verve and venom that it refuses to be ignored. I'm a douche for not putting this out there sooner. Rank/Xerox is vital. (Plus the lead dude is an Aussie, and what with Liars still pushing hard and Total Control killing, says something, dontcha think?)

Rank/Xerox is out now through Ros Records.

Rank/Xerox - Cave Dweller
Rank/Xerox - Nausea