If the title of this cassette-store day compilation release doesn’t give you enough of a clue as to what to expect, then the track listing should: featuring such chart-topping favourites as The Shithawks, Asian Babes and Deathcats, performing tracks with titles like ‘Comin’ Up’ and ‘Bastards’, this is the staunchly anti-mainstream face of contemporary music.
There’s a heavy leaning to lo-fi garage indie, from the fizzy ‘Beauty Freak’ which sounds like No Age playing an Ash song in the next room being largely representative. The Shithawks’ ‘Hollywood Beard’ is as raw as music gets, and sounds like it was recorded on a condenser mic in someone’s bedroom. Come to think about it, it probably was. However, it’s the tracks that deviate from the model that really make this release.
The Poor Things come on like ‘Darklands’ era JAMC before busting into a sunny chorus that’s drowning in fuzz and reverb. The no-fi heavy psyche of ‘Midnight Volleyball’ by Secret Motorbikes really crackles around a big, grainy bassline. Kill Surrrf’s ‘Creepy Beach’ is, as you’d expect, a wild slice of surf garage, a wall of treble coating the buoyant riffage, and Asian Babes’ ‘Valholla’ is a punky slab of noise that comes on like a garage Suzie Quattro. Meanwhile, Sharptooth pursue a more goth-tinged New Wave angle with some murky guitars sawing around a busy drum pattern. Exploding into a six-string blitzkrieg, it’s bloody good stuff. The frenzied thrash of Black Cop calls to mind contemporaries like Cerebral Ballzy and classic old-school hardcore acts. It too is bloody good.
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It’s no criticism to observe that he music featured on this release lends itself perfectly to the format: stylistically and in terms of production, it’s all about the DIY ethos, turning it up and cranking it out for the love of it, for the fun of it, from the sheer pleasure that making and listening to music can bring. The medium is the message.
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