No Sleep In This Weird Wild World

I spoke not all that long ago about Sleepies - check that out here. Well, I was speaking to Nick Sylvester of Mr Dream, who runs the God Mode label, and he let drop that New York mentalists Sleepies were releasing their new LP Weird Wild World through his label in August. Literally the next day, two of the band's members, Tom and Josh, separately emailed me raving about Ty Segall and Dope Body posts respectively, then passing on their track 'Seriously'. Serendipity indeed.

And of course, it's bloody good (I'm so into this delving back into 90s raucous dirgey rock and tweaking it for the 21st century - Cloud Nothings, anyone?). But it isn't even the best song - not by far. This album is so filled with killer that it slays me. Opening with the pent-up swagger of 'Cool Boy' and intensity of 'Combat' (amazing track), it walks through molasses for 'Strange Feelings', and the slowed down mode doesn't affect their attitude one iota, making it all the more powerful because of it. And it keeps rolling on. Which shouldn't come as much of a surprise, seeing as their taste in Mr Dream, Ty Segall and Dope Body is complemented by roping in The Men's Ben Greenberg to produce the damned thing!


You can pre-order Weird Wild World here. This is a great album, one of the better things I've heard this year.

Sleepies - Seriously

Dreams Like Ferns Decay Into Brutal Nothing

Holy fucking shit.

Fern by Seattle's Dreamdecay is my favourite album right now, and it needs to be yours too. This is one inexorably torturous journey for someone slowly and not very subtly spontaneously combusting - and it is pure joy. This is what the Cenobites mean in Hellraiser, not that fucking box and the barb wire and the flaying of flesh!! Dreamdecay has tapped into that early Swans era that is utterly, unforgivably nihilistic, endeavouring to rend all matter asunder. This kind of brutality is not done often enough. Industrial drone doom Jesuscore? Don't quote me on it - but what with The Men and Pop. 1280 also living amongst us, this could be the Second Coming...

Justin of Dreamdecay wants you to embrace his hell! Grab Fern here.

Dreamdecay - 2

The Men Have Opened Up My Heart

The Men are one of my fave bands. Leave Home, last year's LP on Sacred Bones, was incredible. Now, I'm not sure if the new album betters it, but Leave Home was a tough one to beat. Let's just say that I got Open Your Heart at the beginning of the week, and I'm going to end the week with it. Might end the year with it. Who knows? Alls I know is, this is the shit. THE SHIT.

So listen to the below track ad nauseum, or better yet, buy the album - it's worth a million other shit bands entire back catalogues. Happy weekend people.



The Men - Open Your Heart

Posting Rank/Xerox's Punk

San Francisco has to be one of the best places in the world music-wise right now, especially if you love your guitar rock dirty, dingy and fun. But not all is fine and dandy. One of the best albums of 2011 came not from a garage group but some disgruntled guys that, alongside The Men, Iceage and Total Control, proved that some of the best music comes from the darkest spaces - and that post-punk is far from dead, despite many fuckwits' attempts to make it so. Rank/Xerox's self-titled debut is acid-tinged angularity, acid saliva and discord. What's not to love? Nothing, for this album, just like those mentioned above, have distilled what the genre's progenitors (read: Wire, Gang Of Four, Mission Of Burma) gave birth to, and adding so much verve and venom that it refuses to be ignored. I'm a douche for not putting this out there sooner. Rank/Xerox is vital. (Plus the lead dude is an Aussie, and what with Liars still pushing hard and Total Control killing, says something, dontcha think?)

Rank/Xerox is out now through Ros Records.

Rank/Xerox - Cave Dweller
Rank/Xerox - Nausea