[engl] "Street Eaters are a truewave/punk band from Berkeley+Oakland, CA that has drawn a range of sonic comparisons to bands from Wipers to Masshysteri, Autoclave to Drive Like Jehu, Huggy Bear to KARP, Sonic Youth’s Bad Moon Rising to Warsaw. After years of relentless international touring on the heels of their well-received album ""Blood::Muscles::Bones"" (released on Nervous Intent in the U.S./Contraszt! in Europe), Megan March and John No returned home to troubled times in their immediate bay area underground punk community/family and the world at large. True to form, the band sought to come to terms with this changed landscape by diving deeply into their own recording studio to create a new record with an expansive new vision. This record, ""The Envoy"", is a concept album based on famed dystopian, gender revolutionary, anti-authoritarian author Ursula K. Le Guin's influential books ""The Dispossessed"" and ""Left Hand of Darkness"". Songs are at the heart of the album and keep its momentum and energy high, atop a shifting musical landscape underpinned by tension, fierce resolve, isolation, and the vastness of mental and physical space. Directly inspired by Le Guin’s radical speculative fiction and analytical lens on the world around us and beyond it, Yes - GLOOM SLEEPER are very late to the post-punk party, but they don't particularly sound like the contemporary and earlier bands of the genre. Nothing from this release sounds dated or trite. GLOOM SLEEPER's style extends from post-punk to new wave, from gothic atmosphere builders to upbeat guitar pop. The band used the recording session to create a textured sonic art that married a breath taking understanding of atmosphere (without loosing its punky edge) with a sense of emotional fury. The music soars where it should and drifts when the listener needs a break from the intensity. The layered, jangly guitar releases liquid notes, the dedicated bass player pumps out rhythms, the fairly powerful drum section bites and the somewhat gothic styled vocals mixed into the songs take everything to a higher level. These guys from Bielefeld, Germany are creating their music based on the sound made popular by British bands like THE SOUND and ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN or THE WIPERS from the other side of the pond. At the same time, the influence of today's THE ESTRANGED or TERRIBLE FEELINGS is obvious. The result is a unique sound that is somehow beyond mere words – A VOID feels entirely cohesive and unified. The inventive arrangements and intricate playing can't take the catchiness out of these 10 songs: Limited colored (semitransparent turquoise) vinyl comes with a heavy printed innersleeve and includes a digital download card. A VOID will leave you re-playing to excess!

[engl] Go Lamborghini Go is a 6 piece band from Berlin and Leipzig. What started spontaneously as a stand-in for a missing band, grew into a improv-band with more or less fixed line-up. Logically, this record is also all-improvised, only vocals were added afterwards.

[engl] The post-punk wave of the last few years has brought us so many great bands and so many that remain to be discovered. GOING AWAY PARTY delighted us with a great four tracks demo released in winter 2019. With “A Ride With Our Ghosts”, their first vinyl release and impressive alloy of punk incisiveness and dark disenchantment, the band gives its interpretation of a severe and cold environment.The singular atmosphere of cold tension which reigns in GOING AWAY PARTY has something both captivating and exhilarating. The songs shine in their darkness and offer a nagging richness. GOING AWAY PARTY members are also known to play in great bands such as BARREN?, BITPART, BLEAKNESS, CATISFACTION or TURQUOISE... The band was surrounded by friends to make this record a reality : it was recorded and mixed by Jacky Cadiou in Brest and mastered by Will Killingworth at Dead Air Studios. The artwork has been made from pictures by Joan Astarac. It’s a corelease with Destructure, Sabotage and Les Choeurs de l’ennui.

[engl] We are really excited to present the vinyl version of the latest release from France's Gomme, Absent Healing. This perfectly executed all-female post-punk / goth group calls to mind some of our favorite groups such as Malaria and Grass Widow, highly recommended! Gomme is a female-focused 3-piece post-punk band formed in 2015 in Paris, FR. As recently donned Parisians hailing from San Francisco and Vienna, the women of Gomme sing in French and German as well as English. Accompanied by dark rhythms, dreamy riffs, and aggressive beats, the meanings of the songs range from the experience of being a woman in today’s society to the feeling of being lost and disconnected as an expatriate in France, messages that have been proven to unite womyn at their shows resulting in many all-girl mosh pits.

[engl] The Gotobeds' members come from Pittsburgh, Penn., a place notorious for keeping great local bands to itself. But the racket these guys kick up on their first album, Poor People Are Revolting, might be too strong for the city to contain. Guitarists Eli Kasan and Tom Payne spent the last few years as part of the local hardcore band Kim Phuc. Joined by bassist Gavin Jensen and drummer Cary Belbeck, they bring that energy to The Gotobeds, a rowdy, ramshackle party house of a band, built on the intersecting bedrock of post-punk and indie rock. On Poor People Are Revolting, there's something crazy going on in every room, the front porch and the backyard: a party that never dies down or seems to stop, even as the neighbors complain and the cops drive past. Working from the spirit and fundamentals of a small handful of influences — the design sense and intellectual rowdiness of The Fall; the constant evolution and masterful poker faces of Wire, from whose drummer these guys borrowed their name; the sturdy, heroic melodic sense and layered tape-loop production of Mission of Burma — The Gotobeds' members paint a dirty, driven, vulgar portrait of Rust Belt restlessness. Poor People rockets out of the gate with "Fast Trash," a great intro to The Gotobeds' boundless energy. Two-parter "Wasted on Youth/Melted Candle" starts out with a tuneful riff that ratchets past pandemonium. Every song here is an honest-to-goodness anthem, ready to sweep you up in the throttling, last-call anxiety that permeates the band's work — even through all 10 minutes of the single repetitive riff that makes up "Secs Tape." Were these guys from New York City, they'd probably be too tired and broke to play with this level of fevered, feral inspiration. With no fear of being priced out, they launch one of the greatest arguments against Big Apple living with their single "NY's Alright." Like the album's title, the song is a double-edged sword, couching the relative excitement of New York (and hearing all about it from everyone who's moved there) against the reality of people staring into their cellphones on crowded sidewalks, constantly trying to maintain a standard of living that The Gotobeds can enjoy for next to nothing. The sentiment is hammered home in the video for the track, as the band drops a Parquet Courts LP out of its sleeve, only to see it shatter on the floor. One of the strongest American rock debuts in years, Poor People Are Revolting is an obscene gesture hoisted toward anyone who'd claim that the genre is dead.

[engl] Los Angeles’ Grave Flowers Bongo Band’s sophomore LP “Strength of Spring” is an inverted pyramid balanced on the headstock of an acoustic guitar, a rainbow painted in campfire smoke, an endless staircase circling into the clouds. That acoustic guitar, perfectly captured here by Ty Segall’s excellently sere and close mic’d production, plays skeleton to these conjurors woolly grooves, and singer Gabe Flores’ thousand-yard moan keeps us guessing as to exactly where this wildebeest is headed. He pinions these far out tunes, which burst generously with shit-hot guitar leads, Stoogeseque sax squalls, and a gaggle of great eight-armed drum fills, with a flinty wrist-flicking heartbeat as the band turns from whimsy to nimble riffery on a dime, following that pied-piper six string jangling down many lovely rabbit-holes of melody and exploration. It’s obvious these guys play together a lot (the lineup shares two members with acclaimed space rockers Hoover III to boot) and the telepathy on display here is synapse-snappy. Coursing throughout is that note-pad filling, lighter raising, undefinable black magic that feels so rare these days….

[engl] The dark and dreamy halftoned realism of Green/Blue comes into near-perfect focus across 'Paper Thin'. Ever the prolific recording duo, Jim Blaha and Annie Sparrows are back with their third album in as many years, following previous releases on HoZac and Slovenly. Their Minneapolis basement studio has yet again translated to tape what many in the post-punk realm often fail to realize - a certain icy-cool confidence. Chilling vocal harmonies resonate atop melodic guitar leads and a razor-sharp rhythm section as the album stretches to just under twenty-five minutes. Green/Blue evoke a certain somber and honest set of sonics, distilling the now and pondering the future as these ten tracks spin vibrantly at 45 RPM.

[engl] The Guests formed in 2015 when it was decided that the far-left needed a suitable media platform. The project had to be engaging, drawing the people to its message, but dark, reflecting the dismal current state of history. A pop band, drawing on post-punk and goth, was decided as the medium, built on the obscure memory of a one-off New Order cover band performance that Philadelphia residents Christian Vogan (vocals) and Alkis Meimaris (guitar) had done while at school together in New York state. The lineup was rounded out by brothers Hart and Kyle Seely (also of Sheer Mag) on bass and drums respectively, as well as synth player Florence Lin. Together, the Guests envision an alternate, more revolutionary history of 80s-style jangle pop, built on the rock-solid foundation of the Seely brothers’ groove section. Focused guitar hooks and soaring rushes of synth, provided by Meimaris and Lin respectively, interlock atop this, giving breath and motion to Vogan’s calls to arms, battered landscapes and righteous indignations.

[engl] Gym Tonic are an international (1x Canada, 3x France) four-piece (living in Berlin) and talk of the town when it comes to hyped-up synth punk. In some parallel universe, DEVO, Half Japanese and The Residents grew into one and decided to channel their energy into songs about nuclear catastrophes, vitamin injections, car sickness and deadly events. Throw melody lines straight out of the Twillight Zone on top and you have an all-around gem. This is a reissue of the 2019 release on Et Mon Cul C'est Du Tofu?

[engl] The six new songs on Sanitary Situations continue where Gym Tonic started their way to the top with the 2019 full length Good Job. Like their long-time touring siblings Lassie, they know, that it is a long way (to the top). But the proof, that they're on the right track is right here. Drawing inspiration from their everyday lives or the world around, the new record is their usual merging of post-punk with new wave and 80’s synth music, worshipping (not copying) their masterminds DEVO. It includes themes such as addiction, contagious diseases, sexual harassment and the relations between human mind and technology. At times comical, satirical or tragic their songs are always very lively and floorfillers. Gym Tonic: now more than ever.

[engl] "Groundbreaking bands typically don't function as stars hanging in the night sky for all to gaze upon. Rare talent functions more accurately like tectonic plates, mutating their surroundings deep underground by bulldozing the pre existing turf. These kinds of musicians who regenerate and evolve our world by forging new creative languages that future artists will liberally borrow from and build upon. Richmond, Virginia may seem like a surprising location for seismic catalysts, but Hard Copy now joins an elite list of RVA bands moving sound in unexpected and earth shaking directions. Destruction! Invention! Rebirth! Once upon a time there was Honor Role who deconstructed midwest hardcore and carved out a path for what eventually would become mathrock. Combining empathy wrapped in anger, a following generation would use this template to birth post-hardcore and a 2nd wave emotional music. A bit later came Labradford who were atmospheric scientists creating pulsating soundscapes bathed in drone. Their music was so devastatingly unique that Kranky willed themselves into existence to release their debut for which this historic label was built upon and continues to lead the way in experimental music. I can't help but to include Hard Copy among this kind of revelatory innovation. They are subtle shapeshifters of synth driven post-punk. At their core, we find unorthodox art rock for which Talking Heads and Pere Ubu belong, but it is stretched taut like taffy into trance-inducing, long form motorik musings. Singular vocals act as a secondary percussion. Bass lines double as a metronome heartbeat. Guitars zigzag inside a monochromatic prism. Linnear drums hammer the band's abstract narrative into a carefully crafted double-helix staircase spiraling up into ambitious avant-garde territory. Cantankerous poetry minus the Mancunian snarl of Mark E Smith behaves as a modern day deadbeat descendant making good. In short, making very very good. RIYL the kind of bands who have no interest in grabbing a spotlight and are more likely to kick out the bulb to avoid it completely." -Tracy Wilson (Courtesy Desk)

[engl] Debut album (13 tracks) by Haru Nemuri from Yokohama/Japan.Her incredible music is a fantastic mix of Avant-Pop, Punk, Alternative Rock, Hip-Hop, and of course J-Pop. Graced with a similar vision as previous Japanese artists like the BOREDOMS or MELT-BANANA, her album is equally as beautiful and catchy, as raw and in-your-face. Totally awesome! Limited edition of 500 copies on clear/turquoise-mixed 180g-vinyl.

[engl] new album! Mega Cooler Indiepunk from Japan.

[engl] new album! Mega Cooler Indiepunk from Japan.

[engl] HEAVY METAL's 2019 magnus opus up until this point has only been released as a cassette but that is all about to change. 60+ minutes of HEAVY METAL spread over four sides and housed in a gatefold jacket. This is by far Total Punk's most lavish project but as worshippers at the alter of all things HEAVY METAL we are more than happy to fork over the dough.

[engl] It’s not surprising that Hekát? chose their name after the ancient Greek goddess Hekate, the deity of the underworld, witchcraft, nighttime and crossroads. Hekát? are four women coming from different paths, all of which converged in the Spring of 2018, and met at the great crossroad of Athens’ eternal night. Their music is multi-referential, an explosive mix of their magic potions. The heavy, melodic bass establishes the base of their post-punk sound. The drums derail it where necessary. The synths, more electric than electronic, can be heard distinctly, at times leaning towards a smarter New Wave but also giving a wink at garage rock. The vocals sound like an enraged, rhythmic recital tightroping along the melody. As a result, their eight tracks move along a scale, starting with melancholic, urban hymns and ending in anxious, frenzied chases, all tied together with a ceremonial atmosphere. The record title, Days of Wrath, is a translation of the Medieval hymn “Dies Irae,” which warns of God’s wrath, which will come down on the people during the Second Coming. Through their lyrics, Hekát? turn their wrath towards God, the people who created Him and the constricting world those people sustain. It starts out like a cry for help and climaxes into a war cry. Hekát?’s war cry is the voice of a generation of emancipated women in motion. With few similar examples across the Greek scene, it comes as the result of their own liberation and of the many who came before them, paving the way. As political beings, Hekát? cannot but reflect their own gender identity in their music. An identity that—whether on stage or on record, or out there in the high-speed jungle of Greek society—expresses emotions from discomfort to aggression, as it is by definition obstructed by outdated and invisible privileges. For those who don’t wish to understand, they explain it, cut and dry, with their track-manifesto “Soapbox,” reminding them: “You think you see me? Well, you see shit!” However, do not be disheartened. Days of Wrath is not some wooden, incomprehensible declaration of ideas. It is a deeply poetic, atmospheric record, doused in cloudy melodies that know when to hit the gas to carry the listener to the other side

[engl] Castle Face favorites from the Berkeley bedroom-pop weirdos of a decade past, The Herms. A little rawer around the edges than their previous releases, this LP captures the best of a band has been overlooked for too long. Colored vinyl is half opaque magenta, half translucent electric blue, and comes with a flexi of the exclusive track Zombie Divine.