The Answer Is In The Beat

v/a: Remove Records Record Collection #3 tape (Remove Records, 2019)

November 21, 2019 at 8:51 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

In less than two years, Detroit’s Remove Records have already put out a few dozen releases, all cassettes and/or Bandcamp downloads. This is honestly the first release I’ve heard from the label, and the 15 bands on it cover a lot of ground, but they all seem to share a sense of spontaneous and restless creative spirit. Sugar Tradition open the tape with a track which somewhat hilariously sounds equally like prime Led Zeppelin and a just-formed garage band. Sovet Girls deliver some fine dream pop, and Psychic Void bring the acid-drenched psych-punk (extra credit for having the shortest song on the tape). Sisters of Your Sunshien Vapor bring some entrancing electro-psych which thumps along at a bit of a faster pace than the average Spacemen 3-type act, and also ends abruptly at 4 minutes. Shireen M.’s “Running Out of Disk Space” is a brilliant oddity filled with scrambled vocals and a squished rhythm track, sort of like a nuttier Pod Blotz. Following a wistful indie folk tune by Craig Garwood, Just Guys Being Dudes play an anxious, messy song which sounds like it could’ve been recorded in a basement room of a boat rocking back and forth on choppy seas — there’s just something unhinged and seasick about it. Parallel People’s “Hot or Cold” sounds like Beat Happening going for a ’50s rock’n’roll waltz. On the second side, Zilched play a supremely muddy, dazed-out cover of VU’s “Sunday Morning”, the kind that could sound like a mess from a distance, but when you listen closely, you realize that they know exactly what they’re doing. After the synth-enhanced, partially narrated indie pop of Jonathan Franco’s “Wine Lips” comes the glitchy, lonesome dream pop of The Bothness. Tooth play another blistering acid punk song which slashes by in a minute and a half. The Waterheads add some warped vocal effects to their bleary fuzz-pop, and Anomaly’s “Honeymoon” bizarrely sounds like a punk group being hired as the house band for a wedding. The tape ends with “Whitesnake”, a pretty awesome lo-fi techno track from VVOLFGANG, which has a very analog, live band feel, and doesn’t sound out of place on a tape of mostly rock groups. Lots of good stuff worth checking out on here. Name-your-price DL at Bandcamp.