‘Kompromat’ is the third album from Portuguese trio 10 000 Russos and arrives following their second album ‘Distress Distress’ (2017) and a collab LP with Dutch industrialists and Fuzz Club label-mates Radar Men From The Moon (2018). Though tapping into the same transcendental minimalism of bands like Neu!, Suicide and Faust, 10 000 Russos have a sound that is solely their own: João Pimenta's machine-like percussion and brooding vocal drawls sound like a cyborg Mark E. Smith drearily narrating the end-of-times atop the abrasive guitar manipulations and experimental loops of Pedro Pestana and driving, motorik basslines that are seemingly summoned from the most depraved corners of André Couto’s psyche. 

That’s been 10 000 Russos ever-evolving template for many years and on new album ‘Kompromat’, it’s amped up tenfold and delivered with a new-found urgency. Taking its name from the Soviet-era Russian term for ‘compromising material’ (the words earliest use traces back to KGB slang) that was gathered on politicians and business owners as leverage to blackmail and coerce, the monolithic drones heard on ‘Kompromat’ hint at a two-fold revolution – a subconscious upheaval, as well as a socio-political one. They say of the record: “Like all of our work, the songs started from jams and were worked from there but this record feels fatter and has this kind of dance-y vibe to it. Unlike ‘Distress Distress’ it feels like there is a sense of release there, despite the oppressive feeling that runs through a lot of the album.” 

This is something that’s brought to the fore just as much sonically as it is thematically: the heaving propulsions of album-opener ‘It Grows Under’ explore “a general unrest slowly growing inside, a kind-of pre-revolution tension” and ‘Runnin’ Escapin’ is about “random unpredictable situations” and the volatility inherent in them, something that’s borne out as the song unfolds throughout its running time. Then there’s the aptly-named ‘The People’, a throbbing call-to-arms that tackles the album’s revolutionary spirit head-on and ‘The Wheel’, which they say is about “the eternal motion of things and the repetition of history.”

10 000 Russos - Kompromat

Warped Timelines (Grima + Ok Ok)

Taken from Bruch´s third album THE LOTTERY.
Out via Cut Surface.
https://cutsurface.bandcamp.com/album/the-lottery

The Lottery

‘Watch You, Watch Me’ from Suuns new album ‘Felt’ out March 2nd, 2018 on Secretly Canadian

Pre-Order / Stream: https://suuns.lnk.to/felt

Suuns - Watch You, Watch Me

Kompromat

The People

10 000 Russos - Runnin' Escapin'

It Grows Under

Written and performed by LUMER.
Recorded and mixed by Alex Greaves at The Nave, Leeds. 
Produced by Alex Greaves and LUMER. 
Mastered by Pete Maher.

By Her Teeth

Los Angeles-based group The Spyrals are gearing up to release their new album ‘Same Old Line’ on October 30th. Taking cues from The Velvet Underground, 13th Floor Elevators and The Stooges by way of Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Muddy Waters, the record sees the band carve out eight songs of raw, back-to-basics rock’n’roll that marries white-knuckle garage-blues, psychedelic repetition and sun-baked alt-country to create “something new with an old soul”. The record is their fourth full-length to date and their first since signing to London-based label Fuzz Club.  

Armed with a guitar, harmonica and fuzz pedal, band-leader Jeff Lewis formed The Spyrals when he was living in San Francisco in the early 2010s. Now, though, he’s based in Los Angeles and finds himself backed by a new line-up of musicians. ‘Same Old Line’ was cooked up in new drummer Dash’s garage and recorded over the course of a few days and nights straight to a Tascam tape machine. Jeff recalls: “This is the first album recorded with a new lineup after I moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles. At the time of recording we werenʼt sure if this would be a Spyrals album or something under a different name. At some point during the mixing process I decided to keep moving on under the Spyrals name, so to me this album is a real turning point in the band’s history.”

The result is a record that’s just as rooted in the sounds of Nashville and the Mississippi Delta as it is the band’s West Coast garage-rock forebears. “I was heavy into listening to a lot of Neil Young and Crazy Horse during this period too which I can hear in some of the song structures. We actually all took a road trip to Bakersfield, CA to see Neil with Crazy Horse in concert around the time of working on the album.” Lyrically, Jeff says, “it feels like the most raw record so far and the most open and down to earth. Less psychedelic sounds and more real life emotions and situations.” The opening title-track ‘Same Old Line’, for example, is a song about “life’s ups and downs and how some people seem to have it easier than others. We’re all tied together whether we know it or not and in the end we all have our different struggles to get by and keep living.”

Elsewhere, ‘Don’t Turn Me Down’ is a defiant, overdriven ode to “trying to stay positive when obstacles seem to keep coming in the way” and ‘In Your Room’ is a piece of psychedelic alt-country about a “new romance, maybe a short fling, and wanting something to work out that you know won’t be possible”. Charting similar themes, ‘There’s A Feeling’ is about love and travelling (“two things that can be hard to do at the same time”) and ’Goodbye’ is an observation that “life is short and even the stars fade away eventually”, both delivered through the medium of stomping, blues-inflected garage-rock. ‘Just Won’t Break’, on the other hand, is a song about the American Dream and it's hopeless shortcomings, Jeff offering the following advice for his fellow country-men and -women: “Don’t let it get you down. Most of us are still waiting for it to come true.”

Arriving off the back of their 2012 self-titled debut, 2013’s ‘Out of Sight’ and last year’s ‘The Curse’, ‘Same Old Line’ marks a new chapter for the band who have spent the last decade picking up a growing international reputation for their fuzzed-out, driving rock’n’roll. They’ve played with the likes of Spectrum/Sonic Boom, Moon Duo, Fuzz, The Warlocks and Spindrift and performed at such festivals as SXSW, Desert Stars Festival, LA Psych Fest and in 2015 they even headlined a festival in Southern Russia (‘Spring Beat Festival’), one of the first US bands to play in the area. Right before the Covid-19 lockdown set in this year they’d also wrapped up a headline European tour just in the knick of time.

Same Old Line

The Spyrals - There's A Feeling

Good Sick Fun

Sick Fuck

First single off the new 7” out in Goodbye Boozy, January 2021.

Dress The Part

The Flowers - Criminal Waste (1979)

Surrounding Structures

Veik - Difficult Machinery

New album from ex-Staches, Couteau Latex, Purpur Spytt, originally based in Geneva, now straight outta Leipzig, hence the title in German, which means "This Is Not Stealing". Indeed, this is not stealing, I am simply reposting what is available elsewhere.

Marauder has come a long way since its debut demo. Their bedroom synth-pop experiments have transitioned to jam space communal wizardry. Unpredictable but still bouncy, musical but still drony, machine but still human. This is the Power of Four as the title of the album says in French. A homebrewed synth-punk with advanced decorative punctuations. A beautiful mosaic in the decaying ruins of an ancient European city with graffiti on ramparts.

It Grows Under

Fuzz Club Records

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