smörgåsbord

From Sapporo (on the northern island of Hokkaido), CTR play guttural, raw, anti-social god-son of GISM punk, and put a lot of effort into their outfits, poster design and live performances that seem to involve chainsaws and smashing stuff. CTR takes its name from the 1980 movie 狂い咲きサンダーロード, or Crazy Thunder Road 「the Japanese reads literally, and somewhat poetically, madness(狂い）blooms/flowers(咲き）」. The lead singer was formerly in Knucklehead.

I haven't seen this movie beyond a few youtube clips, but it, and CTR the band both definitely draw influence from Mad Max (which, though I won't got to the mat for it like I might for Conan the Barbarian, is nonetheless a pulp classic).

THUNDER ROAD

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Very good Icelandic synth-pop with the right amount of bleakness in the bubble-gum. Includes a cover of 'Killing in the Name of'.

FM

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Drum & Bass / Dubstep Mc & Producer, his favorite tracks of mine were done w/ producer TC, like several of the songs on here, and the one in the video below--which is not acually on this release, but is known to me from this excellent compilation.

Deep like Titanic

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Cheap drum machine post-punk with fractured Americana guitars played by scraggly French hipsters. Claustrophobic, weird and on occasion rather catchy. The few throw-away tracks here are matched by some brilliant ones. I throughly enjoy this band.

s/t


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Grimey British thuggery; the Mr. Slash produced tracks are especially worthwhile.




C for Cocaine

And now for something rather different

Big H; laconic crime-grime. Hard and British with rudimentary but often awesome beats. A bit outside of what I've generally posted, but the video above totally uses a sample from a Japanese video game, so I guess it sort of fits.




STREET CRIME UK

King Cannibal

Evil, dark beats. King Cannibal is a great name and this is a great release, if a bit outside of my usual bailiwick. Low and cold with lots of the tweaked menace I like from nasty ragga and jungle but without the spastic beats I like less.

LET THE NIGHT ROAR

Sally : C-Earth

Heavy. Evil. Gooooood.
Harsh, sludgy, low-end heavy rock from England, released in 2003.

Sally's first album was a raw, stoner-type affair, and fairly entertaining. But on this, their second and sadly final album, they produced something really awesome.
C-earth is an album of pounding, sludgy, hypnotic, fuzz-drenched droning, doomy riffs, stripped of the sort of southern elements which appeared on their first disc (and good riddance too- I can really do without). Billy Anderson's production drenches everything in a nice layer of mud, which suits the grimy, semi-liquid nature of the sound perfectly.

Heavy and hypnotic sum this up best- Sally brings some krautrock and drone influences into their sludged out rock: awesomeness ensues. One of my favorite albums of late--though nothing jumps out initially, it's a grower--and one that I feel deserves a wider audience than it got (apparently it was poorly supported by their record label). Definitely worth checking out.

This band features members of Mistress(drummer), Penance(vocals) & Einstellung.

Standout tracks: 2, 7, 8.

C-Earth (2003)