various artists - Cleanse The Bacteria

I really shouldn't have to explain why this record matters, why I hold it such high regards, why it sucks that it's not readily available. This is the good shit, from a time where the conventional wisdom was that punk was dead, hardcore was something to outgrow, and maybe this whole music thing could make some bread if you just took the hard edges off your sound. Yeah, C.o.C. and 7 Seconds ended up on major labels within five years, and Pushead was designing Nikes within 10, but the whole damned enterprise here is a quarter century ahead of its time. You have a handful of America's finest, Poison Idea and Siege joining the aforementioned bands from Raleigh, Reno, and San Fran. There's also a great sampling of international talent, from Swedish (soon-to-be) legends like Mob 47 and Crude SS, to Japan's the Execute, to deathrock from the likes of Part 1 and Holy Dolls.

My physical copy is the "standard" Pusmort release I copped from Disk Union about 10 years ago during my first trip to Japan. What I'm sharing here has lived on my various computers since the early aughts, and includes the songs from the mailorder-only extra 12". This includes Poison Idea's ripping cover of the Stooges' "I Gotta Right", as well as six other songs. There are a few wild ass bootlegs circulating of this; I wouldn't mind laying hands on this edition, featuring what appears to be a green ink silkscreened cover along with green-tinged center labels on the vinyl. Gnarly.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Tomita ‎- Live At Linz, 1984 (The Mind Of The Universe)

It's the fifth of the month, and the rent still due, but let's look to the future, shall we?

In a step away from my normal fare of "three chords and the truth" (let's be fair, it's more "two chords, a blast beat, and an haiku"), I thought I'd share a recent obsession. It's Japanese electronic artist and composer Isao Tomita, whose back catalog is mostly, sadly and unfairly out of print here in the States. Now, I'm not a streamer, so I've no clue if you can just whip up something like his recording of Holst's "The Planets" on Spotify. But I've turned up a few of his recordings on vinyl, CD, and tape recently, and I think it's worth checking into.

Brian Eno (rightfully) gets a lot of credit for originating/popularizing ambient music, but Tomita contemporaneously served as a counterpart to Eno and Wendy Carlos, bringing synthesized sounds to the music listening public in the 60s and 70s. Tomita composed music for Japanese gymnasts and anime soundtracks, adapted composers like Mussorgsky and Holst, and made a record of 60s pop and rock standards...basically as a Quadrophonic demo for Sony. Without knowing it, I heard his music first as a kid, watching "Star Gazers" and hearing him adapt Debussy for the theme song. Hell...he even did the theme for the "Zaitoichi" TV series.

ANYHOWWWWWWW...

In September 1984, Tomita performed live at the Ars Electronica festival on the bank of the River Danube in Linz, Austria. The program was nothing but bangers: Holst, Stravinsky, Wagner, Vaughan Williams. Even John Williams' theme from "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" made an appearance. It's a pretty awesome concert, the sort of thing that you could play a kid and made them fall in love with composition and the classical tradition. I wish I'd heard it in full when I was 8...or seen it live.

RCA hasn't reissued this anywhere since 1991, which I think sucks. See for yourself. I assume, as a purveyor of the finer things in life, like 20-minute long records with 30 songs, and forgotten Italian giallo movies, you'll probably dig this.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Mission Of Burma - Mission Of Burma

My first exposure to Mission Of Burma was via Rhino's "Faster & Louder" series back in 1993, which might as well just serve as my Rosetta Stone for the music I'd obsess over during next three decades. The first volume remains imprinted in my brain; it's the mixtape from the older brother I never had. It's hard to overstate the impact of hearing "Pay To Cum", "Dicks Hate The Police", "Get It Away", and, yes, "That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate" all in the same place. Add in the cover art by Gary Panter, the photos by Ed Colver, Jenny Lens, and Glen Friedman, and suddenly I had a checklist of things to look for when I went to a record store, or when I started exploring modern art.

My second exposure to Mission Of Burma came a couple years later, when I turned up a cherry copy of Ryko's "Mission Of Burma" double LP for some stupidly-low amount of money at one of the numerous record stores that used to dot Fells Point. Maybe I paid $12 for a copy that didn't look like it'd ever been played and still had the obi strip on it. Ryko was still a couple years away from their comprehensive remastering program, and all that Ace of Hearts material from the 80s was out of print, so I snagged this, alongside a copy of "London Calling" and "Q: Are We Not Men?" for less than it'd cost to get a newly-pressed copy today.

There's been a couple rounds of reissues since then; the aforementioned 1997 Rykodisc remastering campaign, and Matador's consolidation of most of the Burma catalog in 2008. Matador has kept those records in print in really nice editions on vinyl, including a really sick copy of "Signals, Calls, And Marches" on orange wax that they released with Newbury a few years back. But this, comprised of their contemporary material released before their 1983 breakup, as well as a pair of live cuts and unreleased cuts, still lives near and dear to my heart. When I saw a seller who I was ordering another record from had it for a few bucks on CD, well, I knew what to do...

Discogs

Click here to download.

Hüsker Dü - live at First Avenue, 28 August 1985

This is another that I share courtesy of the always-outstanding [shiny grey monotone], whose link has expired, so hopefully they won't be too salty about me reposting. Their original post came two days after Grant Hart died. It's something I've wanted to bootleg ever since. Too bad I've been beat to the punch, like, a million times.

This is Hüsker Dü, playing on their own home turf of First Avenue in Minneapolis, August 1985, right before the release of "Flip Your Wig". The track list reflects this: leading off with the first three tracks from "Flip", then a mix of new cuts and tracks from "Zen Arcade" and "New Day Rising". Not bad at all. It was originally recorded/broadcast for Spin Radio. Volcano Suns and Bad Trip opened.

While I still prefer to listen to "New Day Rising", "Flip Your Wig" was my first ever Dü record, purchased on cassette from the back of a video store in Harford County circa 1994. So I have some very strong feels whenever I hear anything off the LP, remembering bombing around in my mom's Merkur after school, singing along with "Makes No Sense At All", smoking Jacks cigarettes I bought from the Wawa down the road from the house (99 cents a pack!), hating so much of my life even though I probably should have known it was all going to be ok.

Original post here.

Click here to download.

various artists - Tropicana '84-'99

Robin and Elaine at the Tropicana, Olympia, WA (from the Tropicana Facebook page)

I have no clue about the origins of this here CD-R I found last year, but it's a winner of rare-ass WA state punk and garage. The Tropicana was an all-ages space in Olympia that only existed for two years, but served as an incubator for bands like Green River, the Melvins, the U-Men, and Beat Happening. The most recognizable name is Tacoma's Girl Trouble, subjects of a wonderful documentary from a few years ago and maker of numerous rackets since 1987. Also appearing are Noxious Fumes, Immoral Roberts, and Young Pioneers, all of whom put out recordings with K. There are four bands rounding out the comp, none of whom put out anything more than demos back in the days. The addition of Wimps, Generic Crib Death, Communicator, and Idle Worship makes this more than just a KBD-style bootleg. This is a really cool time capsule of an embryonic scene that, within a couple of years, would be setting the pace for the rest of the nation.

Discogs

Click here to download.

"Def-Con 4" coming to Region A Blu-ray

It's difficult, at times, to keep up with the various new release titles that the fine folks at Kino Lorber are releasing or distributing. After all, they have (...checks notes...) 89 new titles coming out over the next nine weeks. But when a crucial title from my youth hits the "coming soon" slate, it tends to stand out.

1985's "Def-Con 4" is what I think of when I remember the heyday of video stores and VHS. There was a one-sheet hanging in a frame in the video store my mom managed that, at the age of 7, had everything my mind was looking for. There was a dead astronaut, a derelict satellite, killer tag lines. It was the tail end of the Cold War, and the Strategic Defense Initiative looked like a reality, so it just grabbed hold of me. I didn't know it at the time, but the poster artist, Rudy Obrero, was also responsible for some of the box art for Mattel's "Masters of the Universe" line. It made sense that I'd be obsessed. I recently ordered that same poster for the New World Pictures home release; it's an indelible part of my childhood that lives on beyond the reputation of a cruddy B-movie.

Now, the folks at Arrow UK released their own Region B Blu-ray in 2019, chock full of the kind of features that has them high on everyone's list of reissue labels. But not everyone has an all-region player, so it's nice to see that the folks at Scorpion Releasing are putting their own version out September 15. Per their Facebook page, it'll have most of the same features as the Arrow UK release. We'll get the same 2K transfer, a new interview with the film's composer, a lossless soundtrack, trailers, and brand new illustrations on the cover. I love the jankyness of that cover. All that said, I'll take full advantage of the reversible cover, and go back to that infamous Obrero artwork.

Click here to preorder from Kino Lorber. "Def-Con 4" on Blu-ray releases September 15, but the gang at Kino Lorber tends to ship preorders a bit early.

Section 5 - We Won't Change

How about some good ol' English Oi!? I found this one in a mixed box of CDs at work last year and snagged it for a measly buck.

Section 5 are one of those second wave Oi! bands that came to prominence after the 4-Skins broke up and Blitz went post-punk. As the liner notes go, they couldn't get a gig for the first two years of the band, no doubt a result of the live environment after the 1981 Southall riot. What that did do was allow the band to hone their chops, as well as trim to a three piece, with Tosh handling vocals as well as guitar. What you get here is their first LP, released in 1985 on Oi! Records, as well as their two tracks from the "This Is Oi!" comp and a mess of demos that predate the power trio. My copy came out back in 1994 on Captain Oi!; a vinyl reissue came out via Spain's Disco Nightmare in 2015.

I keep coming back to the Oi! Records catalog regularly. A track will come up on shuffle, which will lead me to listening to "Unite and Win!" or "Boston Callin'" or "Dead & Buried" or this. Pronounced, even leftist Oi! is still somewhat underheard. So it's cool to come across this period in the mid 80s when a pair of Welsh ex-cons got together, started a band in the Oppressed and helped foster a scene that crossed an ocean and genres. To proudly carry the S.H.A.R.P. banner back then...wow, pretty intense stuff.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Crow - Who Killed Dove?

Note: A special shout out to April and Negative Insight for their awesome article on Grave New World. There's no way I would have gone down this road without their well-researched, well-written history of the band.

Last week's preorder announcement by Bitter Lake Recordings that they'd be reissuing the 1991 Grave New World album "The Last Sanctuary" wasn't just an exciting way to get a classic crust record. It also reminded me how much I love vocalist Crow's previous, eponymous project. So what better time than now to share the debut 7" by Osaka's Crow. It rips.

A lot of Crow's later releases were put out here in the States by Prank, starting with the 2003 reissue of the Artimus Pyle/Crow split 7". But the mid 80s material, prior to Crow joining Grave New World, remains unreleased in the States. There's a great, self-released CD from 1997 that compiles this, the "Last Chaos" LP, and their comp appearance on "Eyes of the Thrash Guerrilla". I wish you luck finding one for less than $50 here in the U.S.

So, enjoy "Who Killed Dove?" If you have no frame of reference, expect metallic hardcore; not so much Earth Crisis, or late 80s Discharge, but something on the continuum between Motörhead and Napalm Death, but with more NWOBHM influence. Does that make sense? I'd rage out to this if I saw it live. So circle pit it up in your living room, or in the park, or wherever the mood strikes you.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Grand Mal - Binge Purge

From Grand Mal Bandcamp

Moving to Baltimore in 1994 synched up nicely with my budding education in punk and hardcore. It was easiest to get into Dischord's releases; every record store had Fugazi and Jawbox records in them, and it wasn't tough to throw some well-disguised cash into an envelope, shoot it down to Beecher St., and in a few weeks open a box with an Ignition 12" and a Hoover CD inside. As I worked my way through the catalog, I ended up snagging copies of "Flex Your Head" and "State of the Union", both of which gave me a checklist of older DC bands to check out.

So I hear Government Issue for the first time, and start seeking out their other records, which is how I learned about Fountain of Youth Records. Despite only being in existence for four years from 1983 to 1986, Fountain of Youth released a lot of really killer records that existed outside the borders of the Dischord orthodoxy. One of those releases that I've grown to love 1985's "Binge Purge" from Grand Mal, a DC punk band with a hard deathrock edge to them.  I feel like this is a strong East Coast counterpart to Christian Death, circa "Only Theatre of Pain".

"Binge Purge" is one of those hidden treasures that you can still turn up for $10 or less. It's easy to see why this record is unjustly overlooked; Grand Mal split up around the time this 12" was released, with members moving on to more recognized bands. Malcolm Rivera is probably the best known, as he'd go on to play guitar in the Velvet Monkeys and Gumball, as well as come to notice as a prominent historian on the subject of 8-track tapes. Joe Aronstamn and Marc Lambiotte would move on to start Holy Rollers, who put out a trio of underrated records with Dischord during the late 80s and early 90s. Meanwhile, the rhythm section of Don Diego and Linda LeSabre would split off and found Death Ride 69, a pretty great goth/industrial band whose second record got reissued in 1999 and played a ton by my girlfriend at the time.

Originally, I had planned to post a link to my ripped copy of "Binge Purge". But in the course of looking for performance pictures, I discovered the Grand Mal Bandcamp page. So I'd suggest heading over there and downloading this. They've also posted up the Würm Baby demo from 1982 ("Apologies" comes from that session) and a live set from 1984 featuring some songs they never recorded in a studio. Let's face it: you're probably due to do something productive with your day. Go check it out.

Get it on Discogs

Bandcamp

Heresy - Never Healed flexi

(courtesy of This Is Punk Rock)

Add this to the long list of records that has darkened my doorstep, only to be quickly flipped in order to pay the rent. I was re-reading Choosing Death, and I got to the part where Digby Pearson started describing Heresy. "Heresy were friends of mine and I would always give them the fastest hardcore band tape that I would trade at the time, and (drummer) Steve (Charlesworth) would try to play faster than that." I love shit like that. Kids playing fast and fucked up just for the sake of it. If I ever was in a band, it's probably sound a lot like this.

Never Healed was the first release from Heresy, and the first recording released on Earache Records. It's a great snapshot of not only where the UK HC scene was circa '85, but also provides insight as to the well from which grindcore would spring shortly thereafter. The always excellent Boss Tuneage Records in the UK reissued the entire Heresy catalog in 2006 & 2007. If you're looking to spend a few bux on early Heresy, check out 1985-1987.










Heresy - Never Healed flexi 7"
(click the record to DL)

RIYL: the P.E.A.C.E./War comp, being 14 and owning drums