[engl] In just half a decade Olympia’s Gen Pop have forged a singular style over the release of several EPs and the aptly titled, 2020 full length, “PPM66”. The group draws water from the disparate wells of early 80’s American hardcore and late 70’s UK post-punk, filtering it through the shitshow chaos of the early 21st century international cultural, political, and environmental climates. A sound fully realized and on display here in the ninth volume of the infamous Beat Sessions, presented by Shout Recordings. Precise, punchy, yet dynamic and fluid drumming underlie a cascade of tones, textures, styles, and voices to form a repertoire of songs where change is the only constant. The music cycles between uplifting, romantic, distressing, aggressive, and disjointed. Tempo and feeling will shift on a dime, and songs often exhibit romance, buoyancy, aggression, and anxiety simultaneously. This performance was captured by Shout’s Mike Kriebel in December 2021 at LA’s Golden Beat Studios. The line up was supplemented on this session by Anthony Gaviria, of the fellow Washingtonian oddball outfit Lysol, on bass guitar.

[engl] Oog Bogo is a Los Angeles based outfit oozing from the deviant mind of songwriter Kevin Boog. Boog, along with a cohort of co-conspirators, dissolve a myriad of influences from rock and punk’s outer fringe into a sodium bicarbonate solution. Heat is applied to the mixture until it congeals into a highly potent and smokable material whose idiosyncratic vocal harmonies and manic, unhinged guitar work push and pull against an unrelentingly in-the-pocket rhythm section. This tape, the 12th edition of Shout Recordings’ nefarious Beat Sessions, closely replicates the band’s live dynamic. Tracked at Golden Beat Studios in Los Angeles by Mike Kriebel and Ty Segall, the release features a collection of songs reimagined and reverse engineered from the perverse home recordings of Boog featured on the band’s previous three releases. Recorded immediately after a tour of America’s West Coast and featuring Shelby Jacobson (gtr), Kriebel (gtr), and Marley Jones (dr), the arrangements are refined in a way that only the road can and these 11 songs erupt from the speaker. The performances here are focused, sharp, and completely disturbing.