ART IS HARD is a small independent record label in Bristol (UK) run by two friends influenced by the attitude and ethics of labels such as Factory, Wichita, Anticon and Dischord. They have a strange habit: release things – mainly postcards – with music, but they published a scarf with download code too.

To celebrate their seventh birthday they asked seven label artists  Samuel Stacpoole from Black Tambourines, KEEL HER, /please/, The Death of Pop, Shunkan, Gorgeous Bully, Oro Swimming Hour to record a 50 second song. Each track is an infectious burst of garage balladry, lo-fi bliss or trademark jangle:

300 copies black 7″ flexidisc with gold foil artwork with a postcard containing a download code. And if you would like to get postcards with music regularly then join the club.

„I like rotten expensive arrogant self-destructive white male culture. Punk was too energetic and positive for me.” Ben Wallers

The Wall is recognized as one of the most famous concept albums of all time. Bass guitarist Roger Waters conceived the album as a rock opera during Pink Floyd’s 1977 In the Flesh Tour, when his frustration with the audience became so acute that he spat on them. Its story, which follows themes of abandonment and personal isolation, explores Pink, a character whom Waters modeled after himself and Syd Barrett who one time was the main songwriter of the band, but was fired owing to psychedelic behaviour in 1968. Later he turned into a silent mad. Well, Pink’s life begins with the loss of his father during the Second World War, and continues with abuse from his schoolteachers, an overprotective mother, and the breakdown of his marriage; all contribute to his eventual self-imposed isolation from society, represented by a metaphorical wall.

Ben Wallers said about: – I don’t find Roger’s lyrics embarrassing if I listen to The Wall with my Mom; but if I listen to Animals with my Dad, I get embarrassed and have to go to the toilet, sorry I mean bathroom.

Anyway Waters is the really interesting character for me. A hopeless case, an utter shit-head. Brilliant character actor and composer. But I have to confess it was burnt into me at age 11/12/13 when I got into ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, ‘A Collection of Great Dance Songs’, ‘The Final Cut’ and ‘The Wall’. I loved them unquestioningly.

So much so that he and Alastair Mackinven also from Country Teasers now show you THE DARK SIDE OF THE WALL on their song for song interpretation triple album under name of THE STALLION.

Apropos of their work they quote inaccurately the cop who shuts the jailcell gate on Woody Allen’s character in „Deconstructing Harry”: – Let me give you some advice: YOU’RE IN DEEP SHIT.

It will release soon on IN THE RED RECORDS (US)

GREAT BUY, CRUEL WORLD!

French psych garage rock and roll band JACK OF HEART and Canadian country rock and roll band STRAWBERRY SUN in BUDAPEST at RNR666 PARTY 17/9/2017 > CLICK

AND THE EURO TOUR VIDEO

Not trivilal that Piero Ilov (JOH) and Jeff Clarke (SS) are members of Canadaian garage rock band DEMON’S CLAWS.

‘Fuck it! You want a strong hook? I’ll give you a fucking strong hook!’

By Jonathan, SHILPA RAY could be Patti Smith and Iggy Pop love child with Allen Ginsberg as the midwife. Maybe, I do not know, but her new album DOOR GIRL released now, and it is among the best ones this year. She is coming from New York, living in a love and hate relationship with the city where she works as a door girl at Pianos bar. And this door girl tells stories about the city and its people who are living in a big sweet rotting apple like worms.

She has started to write this album after she was rejected by record labels and booking agents because ‘she doesn’t write strong enough hooks.’ ‘Fuck it! You want a strong hook? I’ll give you a fucking strong hook!’ And then she wrote the first song for the album in about an hour or so, really angry.

Musically this record is all digging into what she felt was indigenous from New York City, so a lot of the influences came from doo-wop, punk, noise, hip-hop and no-wave.

This song ‘EMT Police and the Fire Department’ is about a hot summer night at the Pianos when somebody called the ambulance, the cops, and the fire-brigade, and they arrived at the same time

‘It was like one of those nights in the summer when you know there’s a lot of trouble about to happen, because it gets swampy and hot and everybody goes crazy… I’ve definitely seen people fighting in the front. It breaks out in this massive wave: it gradually happens and then somebody calls out some kind of a sexist or racial slur, because they always just go to that… Then the whole place just goes crazy. I’ve definitely seen somebody break a bottle over a guy’s head before over something really stupid.’

DOOR GIRL ON TOUR in October in UK, France, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and Czech Republic, in November in the US. So if you want a strong hook, she will give you a fucking strong hook.

UK DATES: 3 > Brighton – Green Door Store, 4 > London – The Social, 5 > Glasgow – 13th Note Cafe, 7 > Gateshead – The Central Bar, 8 > Hull – Adelphi Club

If you want to know more about her songs, she talks about here

The Republic of Macedonia is a little country in the middle of the Balkans which has become independent during the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 90s. And there is an underground music scene.

The Yugoslavian underground was very strong and rampant in the last decade of the South Slav confederacy with many great and strange artists like the Slovenian Laibach, Borghesia, the Serbian Disciplina Kicme, the Montenegrin Rambo Amadeus, the Croatian Satan Panonski, the Hungarian Bada Dada, and lots of others. But I heard about Macedonian underground artists nothing. Until recently when the various artists album „Magare i muzika” (Donkey and Music) has been released on BALKAN VELIKI RECORDS.

It’s a surprisingly good and colourful album about the Macedonian underground from indie pop new wave via psych-folk punk to electronic beats. And exception of Dj Zdena – who played at RNR666 Party in Budapest – and Bernays Propaganda – who makes tours in Europe often – there are totally unknown artists for me. But there are not just Macedonian artists like the Croatian Lutajuci Dj Zdena or the English Membranes because they were also released by BALKAN VELIKI. And at the moment  I have realized that hc-punk jazz fusion band Mnjenje is Serbian. So this album represents a wider region, what means the ex-Yugoslvaian underground is strong and rampant. But unfortunately there are two horrible hard rock songs in the middle of the album:

Anyway, I was curious about the Macedonian people, and it has turned out they are descendants of orthodox Slavs who did not run away and did not become Greeks, Bulgarians or Serbs during the last 150 years. After waves of different national proselytization some of them realized that anyway they are Macedonians. At first officially the separate Macedonian ethnicity was recognised by Communist International in 1934 because Soviet Russia wanted to use the network of Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization to revolutionize the Balkans. Funny, that year the organization was banned and dissolved in Bulgaria where it was state within the state. But after this they could manage to kill the Yugoslavian king and – if he already was there – the French Foreign Minister in Marseille same year within the framework of Croatian – Italian – Hungarian cooperation.

Albano-Macedonian prog folk rock band Blla Blla Blla…

Pic above: Mnjenje

“We know that’s the main aim of the sound: to get a sound that makes you feel sick in the stomach, because it sounds so good.”

NUN plays 70s & 80s horror movie influenced cold electric body noise punk music. Since their debut album, I am a NUN fan, and I have been waiting for the next one. And now, after three years they have released a song in four versions, and I am perfectly satisfied:

Studio and live ones were recorded years before the debut album, two remixes were made by ENDERIE, techno alias of Brisbane based experimental musician Andrew McLellan, who is so without limits that his project CURED PINK also played at Melbourne International Jazz Festival, Sydney International Noise Conference and Deadshits Fest in Brisbane. Anyway there is a new ENDERIE album on PARADISE DAILY RECORDS.

CHAIN & THE GANG are the first and the best anti liberty group in Rock N Roll

and now the founder, Ian Svenonius – the first winner of a nationwide search for the “most perfect boyfriend material a girl could ask for” by Sassy magazine, one of America’s hottest teenage guides to life and love – this was in 1990, at the same time when his then band The Nation Of Ulysses released its debut album ’13-Point Program To Destroy America’ – so now, he tells you the truth

from the new CHAIN & THE GANG album

EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC on RADICAL ELITE RECORDS (US)

Anyway “The reason I entered the Sassy contest is to indoctrinate youth gone astray.”

because “There are so many kids dressing like Grateful Dead people. It’s kind of tedious.”

AMERICA FUCK is the product of living with toxic politics as the foreground; attempting to complete life’s menial tasks while filled with both rage and despair.

AMERICA FUCK is the duo of dark electronic artist Lana Del Rabies – who sings and plays synth bass – and Brian Miller from such great bands as

Foot Village – a drum-n-shout assembly,

Gang Wizard – psychedelic experimental krautrock, new album out now and it’s astonishingly fuckin’ good,

and True Neutral Crew – the Deathbomb Arc Records experimental hip-hop supergroup. He plays drums and electronics.

STATEMENT: Our first album Fertility Clown calls upon the brash immediacy of 80s political punk, the swirling disembodiment of free jazz, shoegaze’s resonate escapism, and the grim despair of goth to create a set of emotional tones that simultaneously are cooperative and combative.

And every song is a manifesto spiced with thoughts of French sociologist Marcel Mauss

„What is „society” for me?… Historically, kingdoms and empires have rarely been the most important reference points in peoples’ lives. Kingdoms rise and fall; they also strengthen and weaken; governments may make their presence known in people’s lives quite sporadically, and many people in history were never entirely clear whose government they were actually in.”  And so on

digital album on electro industrial dance noise hip hop experimental label

DEATHBOMB ARC

Often there is nothing good when old punk bands reunite, but now

sax riddled tuneless semi punk nothing

THE CRAVATS – from Redditch, England, where the National Needle Museum is – released a bunch of 7″ and two LPs between 1977 and 82 mainly by Small Wonder Records.

After broke up the guitarist and the bassist/singer formed the Dadaist post punk band The Very Things which ended in 1988.

On Rebellion Punk Festival in 2009 The Cravats stood on stage again, and have started to play live.

And now after 37 years, they will release their 3rd album DUSTBIN OF SOUNDS on Overground Records (UK).

It is a sax-riddled, bass-laden Dadaist weirdness, and „as always, it’s unique” – said the singer The Shend, and also told: “Music should always be passionate, preposterous, atmospheric and above all entertaining. We fulfill the remit”.

Just like Pere Ubu and The Tiger Lillies but totally different

and we’re all happily aboard to go down with it.”

Soon here is the new ODONIS ODONIS album

Allegedly NO POP is more serene than its predecessors.

But what we wrote about them during the years:

Hollandazde LP 2011: “Allegedly the styles return 20 years after. So – if you didn’t recognize it – the 90s are came back. By the way, we continuously repeat ourselves from the creation. Just our instruments are altered. ”

Better EP 2013: „Industrial surf gaze experimental cold wave disco “punk or whatever i feel. Another fantastic Canadian band.”

Hard Boiled Soft Boiled album 2014: „The chaos keeps growing. Er industrial grunge experimental cold gaze “punk or whatever i feel.”

Post Plague album 2016: „Canadian chaos brigade Odonis Odonis has come back with his psychedelic electro industrial post punk music.”

On the new album they stripping down instrumentation to a handful of synths and an electronic drum kit. The music is a dancefloor friendly blend of hard-hitting industrial, techno, and noise

NO POP out on 22 Oct on Telephone Explosion (Can) and Felte Records (US)

Concert with FRONT 242 on 1 OCT in TORONTO