Local Release Roundup

Thursday, January 2nd, 2020

Originally aired on Radical Beat Radio on Alternative Frequency (R.I.P.)

Acoupstix 

Stoop Coupx

Self-released, 2019

St. Pete rapper Acoupstix wants in on your front porch, but unlike some Washington-backed injustice in Latin America he wants to share the stage with the elected government of the house (ie. you).  This November releases title is a play on the artist’s name (Acoupstix is spelt with the word ‘coup’ in the middle, Boots Riley style), but I’d more accurately describe the experience as a stoop squat.  It’s all about bringing out good social interactions, like if some people took over a luxury condo building downtown and opened a coffee place where the fusion restaurant is supposed to go. Acoupstix’s choice of stoop juice is definitely caffeinated (mug mug mug), with his playful persona moving around over minimalist mid-tempo jazz-hop beats.  I’m also reminded of the likes of Digable Planets and Jamiroquai in some of the track themes, such as positivity (Spite, Wiseman), humility (Righteous), small pleasures (Coffee), and being good to one another (The Rain).  Within these posi vibes Acoupstix indulges in occasional aggression and accumulation brags but is generally kept tethered to Earth by the beats, where, for better or worse in this style, the beautiful instrumentation sometimes absorbs the rapper like an artistic swirl in a hot cup. While Coup's character is generally enough to avoid the record becoming wallpapery, perhaps what it needs is some kind of blown-out hip hop cover of Cock Sparrer’s We’re Coming Back - an observation in no way spurred by staring at the Acoupstix emblem of what appears to be Guy Fawkes fresh from his Epic Rap Battle with Che Guevara, winking from a remixed Liverpool Football Club crest.

Acoupstix is also active in the community, appearing to spend a good amount of his time imploring Mayor Rick Kriseman not to let sewage spill into Tampa Bay.  Local levels of coffee consumption are no excuse for your bad infrastructure spending and the bay itself should not hold the tint of a dark roast. So instead of Kriseman, from the album Stoop Coupx, this is Wiseman.

(Also broadcast was the review for the Low Season release Four More Songs.)

Local Release Roundup

Boxing Day 2019

Originally aired on Radical Beat Radio on Alternative Frequency (Thursday Mornings at 5am)

Car Bomb Driver 

S/T EP

Red Hawk, 2019

One of the most PG-13 songs that Car Bomb Driver has ever written is about fast food, organised religion and global attitudes to labour and consumerism.  Chick-Fil-A Is Closed On Sunday, Dave Reeder’s fantastic sandwich hunt EP opener unleashes a whole slew of topics for analyst nerds to get into.  For example, the line “nobody gets a day off in India or China” led me to learn that Chick-Fil-A’s uniquely American mix of ideologies just recently launched beyond these shores.  In October they opened a location in the English city of Reading (home of the famous festival), only to have any potential lease renewal ruled out in under a week due to pressure from gay rights groups.  [Best Withnail impression] We’ll have none of that Biblical bigotry nonsense here!  We would, however, happily allow a secular reason to keep a business closed on Sunday.  Probably a good thing that CBD (not to be mistaken with the chicken-friendly Center for Biological Diversity) never perform outside a 15 mile radius of downtown St. Pete. 

Okay, so these songs have nothing going on underneath the surface when it comes to message, except the incidental ability to mock pseudo-intellectuals like me who attempt to take a deep dive.  Oftentimes bands that harp on about the lack of serious agenda in their music are sloppy and forgettable. Not so with CBD, who have perfected the art of playing silly but not dumb with a quarter century of rhythmic punk gigging.  Not vocally aggressive enough to be hardcore, too instrumentally meaty to be considered pop, it’s a sweet spot that comes across almost as well on these 9 minutes of wax as it does watching them live. Car Bomb Dave is a brave auteur, daring to write openly of our worst instincts like the misogynist that lives inside even granola-crunching geeks on Ordinary Guy, while side B of this titleless titan is a family affair inspired by I Don’t Want To Grow Up-era Descendents, all sauce-drinking parents and shaking babies and catchy questioning of your own standards.  Rest assured though, it’s all done for the kids in the end; release label Red Hawk Records is run by local 9 year old Charlie.

 

Thanks to Dave for the copy of the record, delivered to me in the dusty guts of the Tampa Bay Times. You can buy it from Red Hawk here.

Jon Ditty & DJ Hurley 

Factory Recall

The Low Five, 2019

I’d like to dive deeper into the lyrics of Jon “Dunedin Brewery” Ditty, but work and obligations bear down at all times.  Knitted amidst the billion words printed in the sleeve of Factory Recall is the theme that Ditty is feeling much the same way on any given day.  The man’s mind is buzzing from start to finish, trying to keep a weird elongated critical eye on the big power struggle issues and the personal minutiae.  The politics slip in where they have space like a feed scan on a smoke break in an economy that never seems to pay enough or a referential retreat into the rock bands that used to bring you so much comfort (Less Than Jake, At The Drive In, Rage Against The Machine).  Junk Mail is the namesake Circle Jerks track for the digital age and just as short, corporate spam another thing we don’t have time for in any sense.  Ditty's voice is dope and there’s no time to chill.  We’ll never be able to afford “the greyest of your poupons” in this service factory of instability.  If your brain hurts from trying to follow Jon’s slapping lips focus on the lovely choruses, features from the likes of Reed Scahill and Ceschi Ramos, and the beats from DJ Hurley that are more easily appreciated on his new cut MAAT’, and great for when you need a break from working hard on the worthy and the not.

You can buy Factory Recall from Jon Ditty's website.

Reality Asylum 

Hyacinth Thrash

Self-released, 2019

I daresay that a band named after a Crass song should have known better than to announce their hiatus on UK election night, even if I am the only person in the middle of that Venn diagram of really caring about both.  Has a man not suffered enough?! It was hard to stay upset though, when the next night at their final planned gig Reality Asylum kindly gifted me their recent album Hyacinth Thrash (in a sexy orange number), and reminded why in those distant winter days of February 2018 I had described their music as “a soothing balm in the night.”  The expertly layered bleeps, beats and squeaks that the band are known for are all here, somehow soft, warm, lush, menacing and banging all at once.  Like the contrast to be found thrashing around in a field of bulbous, fragrant flowers, presumably. For all the justified bluster around what felt like wild ‘n fast Reality Asylum live performances there’s a majority of musically contemplative cuts present here, songs that poke around in your brain, whisper in your ear and lovingly slip their warm gloves around your neck.  Reality takes hold, and in a final paradox, you embrace the darkness, and all the streaks of beauty that come along for the ride.

You can stream and buy Hyacinth Thrash on Bandcamp.

This review was never finished, but is being posted for the scraps of satisfaction that it might provide. "Last edit was on November 16, 2018." Perhaps culture historians will use these unfinished insights to speculate on my writing methodology, and how it inevitably led to my dying as a penniless critic. An actual complete review can be found by our man Tony over at Apathy & Exhaustion.

Pennywise

Never Gonna Die

Epitaph, 2018

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/hypocrisy 

This link is for Jim Lindberg.  If somebody knows how to get it directly to him, do us all a favour and make sure he reads it.  Not only will it give him a litany of alternative terms for “hypocrisy” such as insincerity or casuistry, he can click the dictionary tab to make sure he actually comprehends what it means.  He wrote a really decent book once, so he should be able to manage this problem he seems to have. The entire band might contribute lyrics, but ultimately, the singer is responsible for the words he spews and any inability he might have to tell his bandmates that they are California goofballs.  Thesaurus.com: never set out to write without it.  

I come out swinging with this criticism because there isn’t a whole lot else that I dislike about Pennywise’s newest album, Never Gonna Die.  

Perhaps all his girls are now old enough (the first was born around Full Circle) to start hating his guts and he’s remembering that youthful energy much more fervently.  

Bottomed out with Reason To Believe. Kinda like the common view of the punk “explosion” itself. Seems to have come out of nowhere, but if you look closely, it built up over time.  PW have been gradually improving their game throughout the decade. Making a recovery at all is hard for most artists, and their evolution through the 90s was slow, so I think it's impressive.  It’s like the band made a ridiculously un-punk 10-year plan for getting back on top after coming to terms with the barrel of dishwater that was 2008’s Reason to Believe: record one album with a new singer, then record old songs with the old singer, then finally one of new material, and for fucks sake, take time doing it.  You can’t expect to just effortlessly dump something out like it’s 1993 and you’re still full of youthful vigour. Pennywise here have taken their craft seriously instead of phoning it in.  They have reached inside and found some of that old magic.  It sure makes those of us who have increasingly seen the band as a guilty pleasure feel vindicated for not chucking them completely out of rotation.

Not that it particularly dampened my enjoyment of you at the time, Pennywise, but thanks for doing your least impressive work when I was in the optimal punk early 20s age bracket.  Really appreciate it.

You wanted their output to mature with you. 

Highlight goodbye bad times.

The topics were never really the issue as much as the uninteresting way that they were delivered.  The key here for non wordies or less wordily inclined is that I am loving most of these grooves without checking the album sleeve.  She Said in my opinion is a bit weak, a lightly spruced up version of a mid-career song with its warbling

Buried at track 11.  Slipped in there - racists and trolls in the title track, little rioting Banksy piece on cover.

Trump. Never entirely understood the right-wing association with PW.  Their rebellious but mostly spade-is-a-spade lyrics could be interpreted by different kinds of folks, which in itself is no bad thing.  Was it because the 90s, the skate punk golden age, was also the pathetic high watermark of modern American liberalism, when Clinton was shoving through firebrand progressive policies like shitting out subsidized corn over Mexico and molesting young women?  The only thing dumber than die hard fans of the Democrats is conservatives who don't see how right wing they are. Their unwillingness to really confront this audience is evident in the both the low volume and choice of quotes here: a Trump supporter could hear them, guess that on average the band is not his biggest fan, but still not hear anything that bothers them or makes them confrontational.  Yes, Trump is slyly admitting, when he says he “loves the poorly educated,” that he is manipulating a perhaps ill-informed segment of his base. But he’s also appealing to those people, the ones given few learning opportunities, dumped on by neoliberalism and that the alter-globalization left failed to convince with decades of summit hopping.

The name refers to racism and hatred and stuff, but you know there were plenty of sneers.  “Those clowns are still around?” or “are they really trying to reference the most overused statement about the status of a genre in the history of human expression?” 

Not exactly Eminem but you can judge the political climate by how willing Pennywise is to alienate some of their hymn bros. 

Middle age, not just pretending to be young (Time bomb)

Blue album cover quality.

You can hear Never Gonna Die in full on Youtube.

Low Season
Four More Songs EP
Self-released, 2019 



If I had time to review the new Low Season EP, it would go something like this, but with far more unnecessary political sidebars and references to hip hop shoehorned in.

"If the title of this melodic masterclass doesn't exactly impress you, rest assured that St. Pete's Low Season took all the time that others bands would have spent worrying about the packaging and put it into crafting their songs. And presumably, all the time that some other bands would have put into applying layers of Misfits paint to perform numbers with titles like Melting Makeup and Lines Across My Eyes. Each track sounds different to the others and each is bound to be a blinder live. The Four More Songs EP is another testament to brevity in a sub-genre that you should really have the good sense to be sick of by now. And one of the four tracks isn't even a 47 second jingle for Adbusters Magazine masquerading as a proper song (see Devil Inside My TV from their previous offering)."

Last summer I was provided with some free calling cards courtesy of the lovely Cards For Humanity art project.  To get feedback for the project I recently answered the following questions.  The full results of these surveys will eventually take the form of a book and website.  You can read the promo that I wrote for them in September at this link.

 

1. Briefly describe your business or gig in ±250 words.

Radical Beat is a writing/journalism project focused on the intersection of underground music and radical politics.  I've been writing about music for about fifteen years, with the idea for Radical Beat coming about in the last few.  Basically, these are the subject areas that interest me, and as my knowledge and writing abilities developed I came to realise there was no reason not to bring the topics together, as there can be a lot of crossover.  I believe that cultural criticism is important for brewing new ideas and promoting creative economies, and equally important is political action, without which all the words in the world have little importance.

2. What impact do you think you have on the community?

I like to think that my writing encourages musicians to work on their craft, to reflect on what might be working for them and to know that some people are paying close attention to their efforts and what they bring to the community.  As for the political and environmental writing, hopefully they help to spread new ideas and connect the dots between various issues.

3. What do you hope to achieve? What are your goals?

I want to contribute meaningfully to scenes that have given a lot to me, and build community to change the cruel systems that we live under.  On a more down to Earth practical level, a paid job writing about music and/or environmentalism would be great!

4. Do you do this for profit? If so, is it your main source of income? If not, how do you finance it?

Radical Beat has been done entirely during so-called free time.  While the occasional bit of money comes in from selling zines, etc, there's so far no way I can see to pay my bills doing this.  Even as a pastime/interest with very little in the way of physical supply needs, it's hard to do around the need to pay the rent.  Projects like Cards For Humanity certainly help.

5. How have the cards benefitted your business/gig or reputation? Have you noticed any financial difference, such as the number of clients, sales, hits, or gigs? 

 

There hasn't been any noticeable surge in interest since I began using the cards, but more people have continued to follow what I do.  They've been helpful mainly in that I haven't had to worry about making low-quality cards of my own and don't expect to for some time!

6. Do you think well-made cards can inspire other craftsman to improve the quality and originality of the art and design scene in St. Petersburg? Do you feel a similar obligation to uphold quality standards in the St. Pete arts community through your work?

Yeah, absolutely.  A card might seem like a marginal thing, which it is in a sense, but I can see someone looking at a nice one and thinking "they put the thought and effort into this. I should put the effort into my thing, no matter what sort of thing it is."  I do absolutely feel the need to hold my work to a high standard of quality, hard and subjective as that might be in a lot of ways.

7. What differences do you notice between the social interactions you have with people physically versus through online networking sites? Do you think physical calling cards can help facilitate in-person interaction? Do you find in-person interactions to be more effective than online networking methods? How so?

A physical interaction, even a short one, features some of the stuff that I am always wishing for online.  Questions, feedback, compliments, all of which we are generally too distracted to have time to type out, in my experience.  As much as I bash materialism, the tiny dopamine hit of getting a pleasant physical object (with an extremely small environmental impact, to be fair) could help someone stay invested in conversation, assuming they were somewhat interested to begin with.  In my case I am not sure if in-person interactions have led to many actual page views, etc, compared to when someone has the real content to look at, although that may be a fallacy based on the fact that most of the work is online and that which isn't online I cannot track.

8. Has Cards for Humanity affected your outlook on voluntary arts barter? For instance, instead of treating peers as clients, would you now be more open to trading creative services with other local artists/craftsmen in an effort to develop more meaningful, altruistic communities?

I think faith in the concept of any kind of alternative economics like barter needs to be constantly renewed, in light of the fact that traditional economics is shoved in our faces and presented as "normal" every minute of every day!  So academically, no, I was completely on board with this sort of thinking before.  But it's a welcome reminder to question ones own motives in all interactions and up our "don't be a selfish atomised bastard" game.

9. Do you think this project could be replicated and adapted by other artists and designers to increase the camaraderie in the St. Petersburg community? For instance, how do you (or might you) give back? Do you think future unsolicited support for emerging artists should be encouraged? Why does a quality arts community matter to you?

Since much of the criticism I write is generally positive it's already promotional of other artists in a way (and occasionally, they are just full-on promo pieces).  I think one of the challenges here is that there seems to be a general feeling among artists that art is not sufficiently valued and they are underpaid already (which it's difficult to argue with).  On the other hand, if art is about being creative, then being creative in your economic approach should certainly be a topic for discussion, and indeed many artists do work for free or at a loss.  If artists of different persuasions are being underpaid then at least they can help each other.  So yes, this should absolutely be encouraged.  Without a quality arts community we have nothing but gourmet dessert fooderies and horrific retail mazes, at which point we may as well all just wait at home for the impending ecological meltdown.

Mosquito Teeth/Pig Pen/Car Bomb Driver/Dea & Saint/Mickey Spixx/Acoupstix

Saturday, December 29th 2018

Fubar, St. Petersburg FL

The Radical Beat musical heaven where punk and hip hop fuse at the, er, hip, was never presented so starkly.  Acoupstix is once again funny and captivating, capturing the party in his grin as well as he captures the shitty issues of the day in this here column that he wrote.  Trio Mickey Spixx take a room already filled with so many bodies and fill it further with love, love, love.  I finally get to see Dea & Saint with their full band lineup, and I get it, in the sense that I don’t quite get it, and I’m looking forward to perhaps further getting it, which is kind of exciting in itself, because we don’t want to be either trapped or doomed by the forces swirling around us or the limits of musical convention.  Car Bomb Dave of Car Bomb Driver is in full force energy mode, showing up Howlin' Pelle of The Hives with his skinny tie and slack-clad microphone moves as the band blast through a high-powered setlist building to a furious version of Ace of Spades.  Police visit briefly, worried we might throw The Damned on the jukebox and smash the place up; ready for any scenario comes Pig Pen, suspiciously timed and snouted and masked and armed with thick bacon strip riffs.  Mosquito Alert, aka Mosquito Teeth bring a colourful peak of steamroller noise and lager flying madness, a cover of the aspirational Do What You Want, and a new, free mini album by the title of Fubar.

This whole thing feels like a celebration born of grief, like a New Orleans jazz funeral.  Aside from all the familiar musicians and scene supporters I see and chat with people that chronicle my own sordid history in St. Pete, which began just two months after the opening of Fubar: old friends from the MYRA Radio Network at St. Petersburg College, from Community Cafe, from Mother Kombucha.  The packed venue is a living document, hours now from being shredded. The sense of loss that is about to come over this place, scattering us back to our atomised lives and homes, is suddenly palpable and upsetting, of the kind that for a second you allow yourself to believe cannot actually be happening.

Do you know what this is, developers, landlords and the politicians who thrive on their donations?  It’s called COMMUNITY.

Their money will be louder than us until we GET LOUDER.  This is why we need groups like Extinction Rebellion Tampa Bay that will challenge the inconsistent policies we see from local governments and planners.   Climate change threatens us all, but community and survival are meaningless without one another, they are interdependent. Seeking to lower the energy burden on working people is undone by policies that encourage rising rents.  Protecting neighbourhoods from rising sea levels (which current plans fail to do anyway) is less meaningful when there’s nothing left in them but resource intensive chain stores and a resource intensive demographic that can pick up and leave at almost any time.  Climate and resource pollution will increase as long as cities are planned around the frivolous desires of those with excessive disposable incomes.  The objectives of our economy need to be seriously redirected, otherwise all of this will be gone one way or the other.

Mark January 26th in your diaries, and get ready to rebel.

Radical Beat's Top Ten Albums of 2018

Published at Apathy & Exhaustion

It’s been a full official calendar year of Radical Beat writing, slogging around trying to make sense of this wild terrain, and here’s my top ten albums to put a bow on it for 2018.  What a stressful but largely satisfying time it has been. Special thanks to Apathy & Exhaustion: there’s no way I would have heard some of these without Tony hurtling them down my inbox, and I wouldn’t have been on the lookout for many of the other ones without doing Radical Beat and contributing to A&E.  Thanks mate.

Reviews are linked in the titles. It would be great if you gave a few a read, as we spend a lot of time on these reviews, and in my case at least, the album pieces are woefully under read when compared to protest coverage, articles or live reviews. Thanks!

Jeff Rosenstock - POST-

A January 1st release that managed to fend off enough competition for the full twelve months is impressive, but there was never much doubt that POST- was going to make it.  This thirtysomething punk record marries personal and political anxiety perfectly, and the lovely Jeff Rosenstock even gave it away for free.

https://jeffrosenstock.bandcamp.com/ 

Evidence - Weather or Not

Mr Slow Flow of Dilated Peoples fame released his third and supposedly final weather themed record here, with a rain-focus that is working nicely again as we head back into winter.  While it’s not mind-blowing lyrically, aesthetically it combines East coast boom bap and West coast smoothness into a really enjoyable experience.

https://misterevidence.bandcamp.com/album/weather-or-not 

Reggie & The Full Effect - 41

41 is a piece of sophisticated, middle-aged emo, with a lot of sad moments but also beauty, humour and gonzo, topped with James Dewees’ powerful pop pipes.  The award for “Best Song Title of the Year” goes to the fun electro-swamp of Channing Tatum Space Rollerblading Montage Music (feat Fluxuation).

https://purenoise.bandcamp.com/album/41

Pennywise - Never Gonna Die

“Tony already did a review, but I’ll do one myself for fun as soon as I get chance,” I told myself in April when Never Gonna Die came out.  Famous last words of the always-working-on-new-last-words-wordsmith.  But his review gets to the gist of the matter: this is an old-fashioned Pennywise album that is one of their best in two decades, delivering hope to nearly any artist who is considered long past their peak.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcZMZxR9uxC-yIs2tYMLHLfYAWsoH2rWk

Superchunk - What A Time To Be Alive

Despite all determinations that the Trump circus would not be “normalised,” after two years within this belly I can tell you that it seems to have happened.  And while a lot of anti-Trump posturing has become tiring or worse, the alt-pop What A Time To Be Alive manages to tackle the state of our days in a way that is anthemic, uplifting, cathartic and downright danceable.  

https://superchunk.bandcamp.com/album/what-a-time-to-be-alive

Epic Beard Men - Season 1 (live review)

The debut album from former Epitaph rapper Sage Francis and B. Dolan manages to have a classic hip hop style without sounding like a nostalgia project, all full of flair, original choice of topics and a big bold sound.  If you spend every holiday season on the hunt for unconventional tunes, listen to War on Christmas.

https://epicbeardmen.bandcamp.com/

Popes of Chillitown - Work Hard, Play Hard, See You In The Graveyard

This one took me back to blurry-eyed fun times at Satan’s Hollow.  Intelligent words and beat-heavy ska punk club music from London’s Popes of Chillitown.  You can enjoy each element depicted in the album’s title in isolation, or as part of a satisfying, hearty whole.

https://popesofchillitown.bandcamp.com/ 

Revenge of the Psychotronic Man - That Was Just a Noise

An unreasonably fast punk compilation from Manchester’s now defunct mainstays Revenge of the Psychotronic Man (they played their last gig in early December).  A fitting documentation of over a decade of drinking music with nods of social consciousness, fun remixes and love for our animal friends.  See Andy’s top ten for 2018 here.

https://tnsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/that-was-just-a-noise

Four Fists - 6666

Another long-awaited rap collaboration that pays off, 6666 from Astronautalis and P.O.S. is as beautiful as it is dark.  The influence of punk on the album is undeniable even without any fast guitars, from the no bars held pissed off lyrics of fire and revolution, colourful but purposefully unglossy production, and Joe Strummer as the project’s spiritual advisor.  A class piece of work, in every sense.

https://fourfists.bandcamp.com/album/6666

The Antidon’ts - We Reap What You Sow

This local Florida entry tops the year off with surf-vibed, crusted-skate vigour, dissatisfaction dissipated through punk rock chops.  We Reap What You Sow also, almost single-handedly, does a good job of both pulling down the average age of the artists in my list (a bit at least) and holding my reputation as a local music journo-supporter intact.  Keeping the dream alive.

https://theantidonts.bandcamp.com/album/we-reap-what-you-sow