Apollonia, Nikos and Adonis, schooled and skilled in the ways of the old, these siblings share a kinetic bond that is erupting in real time and their band is called Frenzee. They are Occams Razor, hair trigger tight, pulverizingly mean and lean. Born in Melbourne, raised and based on Crete, Frenzee embody the antipodean riffing of AC/DC, The Hard Ons and The Angels but with a heavy dose of their childhood loves Bikini Kill, Motorhead, The Prodigy and Rage Against The Machine.
FRENZEE
Bella and the Bizarre is a high-energy Berlin-based band that blends the raw intensity of garage rock with a tender soulful flow. A wild fusion of garage punk, sixties rock n roll and a touch of RnB soul, with its own gentle smokiness. Combining a broad spectrum of influences – from Wanda Jackson to the Remains, Eartha Kitt to the Ramones, they are ready to set you in trance! Known for their vibrant stage presence and infectious energy, Bella and the Bizarre deliver performances that are as captivating as they are unpredictable.
Cable Ties are a fierce, tense rock’n’roll trio. They take the three-minute punk burner and stretch it past breaking point to deliver smouldering feminist anthems. Post-punk and garage rock hammered together by a relentless rhythmic pulse. Jenny McKechnie channels her struggles into songs that resonate deeply, giving voice to feelings often buried in modern life. Shauna Boyle and Nick Brown are a rhythm section anchored in Stooges primitivism-relentlessly hammering out a bedrock for McKechnie’s guitar pyrotechnics and vocal wallop. Three friends summoning a rhythmic tide to deliver anthems that turn latent anxieties into a rallying cry.
Like a sweet spring breeze after a long, cruel winter, Cory Hanson’s blowing through town again. And like the wind, I Love People comes from parts unknown. Need a ride? Long as you’re ready to find yourself wherever it dies down, jump on!
Despite all the complications of life here in Central Casting 2025, Cory and the boys are happier than ever to be playing music at its most beautiful for ALL the people: eminent hipsters bellied up to the bar alongside the ropers, riders and all the other jokers for whom freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose or do.
Followers of Cory’s twin arcs as solo singer and Wand member will be intrigued to learn that the lineup here is the same band that recorded last year’s Vertigo. Yep, Wand—their Masters of Unbounded Space robes traded in for Wrecking Crew trucker’s caps, as they reel out licks both tasty and smooth, like chopsmeisters of yore. That’s Robbie Cody co-producing behind the desk, Evan Backer playing bass and arranging strings and horns, Evan Burrows on drums and percussion and Cory on piano, guitars and voices and songs.
Travelin’ light and puttin’ up dry, I Love People bugs out to the what-the- fuck?-ness on the edge of town spied now and again on Cory’s previous solos, Pale Horse Rider and Western Cum. Here though, the simmering shades of Rider’s quiet horror and the bursts of Cum’s cartoonish, gun-slinger bravado have given way to an ever-more impartial view of life on the ground, tinted in gossamer sepia and other nostalgic tones. Written over the past several annums, Cory’s songs ensnare the 70s singer-songwriter in a feedback loop, drawing additional inspiration from the indelible everyman melodies of the American Songbook. With gilded threads and emboldened needling, I Love People’s songs are rendered with immediacy and a deep-pile Hollywood production sound that radiates affluence and comfort, even in the darkest and coldest nights way out beyond the range of any signal.
Placed and displaced among gorgeously outfitted musical arrangements, I Love People’s people are kin to their threadbare folk forbears. Song by song, their occupations, social positions and dispositions unravel like silk into the wind. While they perform, Cory loiters backstage, gently pulling at the curtain to reveal silly details hidden in plain sight inside America’s broken heart. It doesn’t come as a surprise, and it’s not strictly funny, either: a giddy mash of the two, the delirium that comes from finding what you think is “true” is someone else’s “false.” When maps won’t help you find out where you are anymore, you’re as normal and horrible as the next person, playing out your days in a place of constant activity with your parallax view progressing invisibly into a limbo beyond the horizon. That’s your freedom for you, and it might be more sad, more terrifying—if it weren’t so much fun!
Even though their subject won’t stop squirming, Cory and his merry men have constructed a timeless still life with I Love People, simply by living for the fun and love of it all. Just like the rest of us!
Describing their music as avant-tard and idiot savant punk rock, the UV Race are an Australian outfit whose music combines the structural trappings of garage punk with a purposefully off-kilter attack that fits somewhere between deliberate primitivism and art-damaged provocation. Formed in Melbourne in 2007, the UV Race features guitarist Alistair Montfort, singer Marcus Rechsteiner, Alex Glazov on keyboards, Georgia Rose on sax and harmonica, Moses Williams on bass, and drummer Dan Stewart. The group played its first show in July 2007 and released a demo on cassette later that same year, with the UV Race displaying a lasting affinity for the lo-fi analog format. After a handful of cassette-only releases, the UV Race moved up to vinyl in mid-2008 with their first 7, Lego Man, issued by the Aussie indie label Aarght Records. Aarght also put out the band’s next release, a split-live cassette with Eddy Current Suppression Ring; Mikey Young of ECSR was an early booster of UV Race and has produced most of their recordings. A second 7, Malaria, was issued by American indie imprint SS Records in July 2009, and the group’s first full-length album appeared later the same year on Aarght; originally distributed only on cassette, it was later reissued on CD and LP. In 2010, UV Race toured the United States for the first time (the itinerary included a stop at that year’s Gonerfest in Memphis, Tennessee), and another 7, I Hate You, appeared on the Fashionable Idiots label in the fall. In early 2011, yet another 7, Acid Trip, hit the racks via Sweet Rot Records, and noted American garage punk label In the Red Records released UV Race’s second album, Homo, in late March the same year. Their next project was filming and recording the soundtrack for a film, Autonomy and Deliberation. It was released in November of 2012, roughly the same time as their next studio album, Racism.
Fittingly born at the dawn of the 21st Century, The Intelligence’s brand of art-smarm surf has become a touchstone for with-it rock ‘n’ roll of the era. Perhaps a surprising assertion, especially considering their primitive and personal origins, but one cemented by the dedication and continual reinvention fostered by main-brain Lars Aldric Finberg. For all their longevity and prolificacy, The Intelligence is a restless, ever-evolving vehicle for Finberg, showcasing his presumably patented knack for sharp pop songwriting that rides waves from both the past and heretofore unknown. Before the jets have cooled from the recently released Live in San Francisco LP (Castle Face Records nothing but hits says Oh Sees producer/heckler John Dwyer) The Intelligence have announced their 10th album Un-Psychedelic in Peavy City . Recorded all analog/no computer hidden way up in the northern California woods with Tim Green (Bikini Kill//Wand/Melvins). Building on the newfound freedom of last years Ty Segal produced Moonlight Over Bakersfield , leader Lars Finberg’s oddball solo LP, we find the band unhinged and inspired, stretching out with longer songs even bigger drum sounds and bass as the secret weapon. Here is the Intelligence at their most Devo minimalist giving the tape machine room to breathe in this Pro-Tools wasteland. After the polished decay of 2015’s Vintage Future the band have retired the keyboards and drum machines and moved out of the garage and into the basement and unplugged the lights. Songs like L’apple du Vide and Mute Me are among the bands punkest moments while Year of the Vet and Auteur Detour deliver a new self-described No-Wave Santana vibe. 10 albums into their career the Intelligence have found a way to distill their previous strengths and still move sideways.
For the better part of a decade, LA’s scrappy rock n’ roll mystics Death Valley Girls have used their music as a means of tapping into a communal cosmic energy. On albums like Glow In The Dark (2016), Darkness Rains (2018), and Under the Spell of Joy (2020) the band challenged the soul-crushing banality of modern society and celebrated “true magical infinite potential” through a collage of scorching proto-punk riffs, earworm melodies, far-out lyrics, and lysergic auxiliary instrumentation. But on their latest album Islands in the Sky, Death Valley Girls’ songwriting mastermind Bonnie Bloomgarden uses the band’s anthemic revelries as a guidebook to spiritual healing and a roadmap for future incarnations of the self. And while these may be the loftiest aims of Death Valley Girls to date, the resulting music is also by far their most infectious and celebratory. The seeds for Islands in the Sky were planted while Bloomgarden was bed-ridden with a mysterious illness from November 2020 to March 2021. “When I was sick I had to sleep most of the day. I kept waking up every few hours with an intense message to take care of the island, feed the island…I have no idea why, but making music for the island kept coming up.” Before her illness, Bloomgarden’s primary focus was writing songs to help other people deal with their own suffering. But something in her shifted, and she began to turn her focus inward. “When I was sick I started to wonder if it would be possible to write a record with messages of love to my future self. This was really the first time that I consciously thought about my own suffering and what future me might need to hear to heal. I struggled so much in my life with mental health, abuse, PTSD, and feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere. And I don’t want anyone-including my future self-to suffer ever again. I realized that if we are all part of one cosmic consciousness, as we [Death Valley Girls] believe, then Islands in the Sky could serve not only as a message to her future self but also as a message to anyone who might need it. With the dual powers of Harry Schemel’s guitar prowess and the addition of new bassist and co-lead singer Sammy Westervelt, Death Valley Girls set out to make their most ambitious and exciting record to date at Station House Studio in Echo Park. Islands in the Sky opens with a patient, hazy, aura fueled synth, organ, and Schemel’s dusty guitar twang on “California Mountain Shake”-a love song to our future selves. The slow-burn yields to “Magic Powers,” where Death Valley Girls teach us how to harness the hard times, abuse, and feelings of being alone, abandoned, or powerless in your life into magic powers. This segues into the title track, an anthem fully deserving of having an entire album share its name. Imagine Rush’s “Freewill” without the math but with an even more triumphant chorus and an openness to otherworldly possibilities. Suicide Squeeze is proud to release Death Valley Girls’ Islands in the Sky to the world on vinyl, CD, cassette, and DSPs in early 2023.
Four years after they went all the way to Antarctica, Flat Worms are back in gen pop with the rest of us – but, as intoned on the album opener “Sigalert”, “back again like I never was”. Is this a nod to the way time passes over our sorely vexed synapses? Or are we to believe that there’s hope to be found in this broken world? Kick back with Witness Marks and see what other traces Flat Worms have left us in the dust. The album title alone leaves a foreboding impression. But look closer – “witness marks” aren’t something out of a forensic analysis – they’re actually practical: scratches placed in old clocks designed to aid continued maintenance down the road. Sure, there’s big questions and more on the board; primarily if we’re at all distinct from the absurdity coming down around us, or just another character in the mirror? Flat Worms are looking inward this time, outlining personal space in relation to themselves and others – sometimes, even people they barely know. Among the slabs of slate-grey discontent, the flowers of compassion are blooming, and the simmering power of their trio grows exponentially. Working once again with Ty Segall, Flat Worms continue to find new answers by digging into themselves and playing their kind of rock: hard and flat, bass and drums thrusting stalwartly forward with conviction, guitar twisting and spinning in outrage, deadpan vocals decrying a dire set of circumstances. The democracy of working together, so often messy and frustrating, was found to be a powerful release for Justin, Tim and Will. Acting as one, Flat Worms navigated challenging times by coming together, finding release in the clockwork repetitions of practice and the shared creative space they occupied together against the encroaching world. In the short century of their existence, Flat Worms have agitated against the status quo with a disquieting lyric bent to emphasize the psychosis of the times. Witness Marks surveys an evolving sense of community. Flat Worms are dedicated to persevering and using the power of their collective. Come witness!
Fuzz is Ty Segall (drums/vocals), Charlie Moothart (guitar/vocals), and Chad Ubovich (bass). They are heavy-rock lifers and three California-bred dudes who have been refining their riffs and getting weird together since high school. Fuzz was formed in/around 2011 as a collaboration between Segall and Moothart. Fuzz have flipped through used bins, hard drives, and record collections of the world, seeking out the finest weirdo cuts.
In 1999 King Khan, Aquarius and founder of the greatest cult phenomenon since the parting of the Milky Way, assembles the 8-piece band called The Shrines. Together they begin spreading their hypersexual gospel around the world, stunning Krauts and becoming notorious for being one of the most entertaining groups since the days of Ike & Tina. Dressed in their ceremonial duds, King Khan and the Shrines, are more than just a psychedelic soul revue, imagine Roky Erickson backed by the Sun Ra Arkestra or Wilson Pickett leading The Velvet Underground, wearing a golden cape that wraps around the world, a Bollywood James Brown reading his self-made tarot cards (WHO DOES THAT!?). As the love child of Anubis and Kali, King Khan & The Shrines have pillaged countless stages around the world and are known to frequently drive audiences into a sweaty orgy. If musical salvation is what you need, if your soul is searching for true absolution, look no further….Let King Khan & The Shrines come into your mind, body and soul to heal your every hurt. King Khan & The Shrines’ first album Three Hairs & You’re Mine was produced by Liam Watson, recorded in the legendary Toe Rag Studios in London and released on Voodoo Rhythm in 2002. A second full-length, Mr. Supernatural, followed in 2004. Their greatest hits, aptly titled “The Supreme Genius of King Khan & The Shrines”‘ came out in 2008 on Vice Records and for the first time their music was widely available in the U.S. Since then King Khan & The Shrines have played at several notable festivals including ATP, Coachella, Sasquatch, Pitchfork and South By Southwest. Furthermore King Khan was invited by Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson to perform at the Sydney Opera House as a part of the Vivid festival in 2010. In 2013 King Khan & The Shrines joined North American cult indie label Merge Records who released the groups 4th album called Idle No More. The single Darkness”, which, as King Khan says, is about the “ugly beasts that must be tamed inside of us all” and also his “attempt to do something as real as Nina Simone”, was premiered by none less than the New York Times. If true or not, one thing is for sure : “King Khan is that fiery arrow shot into the night sky which no one knows how high or far it will travel, however we do know that as that fiery arrow streaks across the heavens, along the way its flames will light up dark places.” -John B. Smith founder of Memphis activist group The Invaders.
