LULU'S MAY 2021 NEWSLETTER

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Featured in this newsletter:

BURIAL - "CHEMZ/DOLPHINZ" 12"

SMIRK “SMIRK” LP

MOON RITUALS - "AURA / PAINTING A BIRD" 7"

WASTE MAN - “ONE DAY IT’LL ALL BE YOU” LP

EXECUTION – “SILENTLY IT GROWS” 7”

KYOUFU SHINBUN - "DEATH TRAINING" 3xLP BOX SET

LAVENDER FLU - “MOW THE GLASS” LP

EXEK - “GOOD THING THEY RIPPED UP THE CARPET” LP

PIPYU - "PIPYU" LP + 7"

MAY 2021

Here we go! Big new this month is the announcement of the long awaited second LSD Club album - "Good Thing They Ripped Up The Carpet" by shop favourites Exek. The Lulu's Sonic Disc Club have been working on putting this together for months now and we're so stoked to finally be able to share it with you.

Pre orders are available now, with the lead single Several Souvenirs (and it's incredible accompanying video by Hannah Nickkelson & Robyn Daly) up for your viewing/listening pleasure. Still got a few copies of the limited white vinyl if that’s your thing, but get in quick!

Suss the full write up in this month’s newsletter, alongside some of our other favourites from the past month.

Until next time,
Lulu xoxo

BURIAL - "CHEMZ/DOLPHINZ" 12"
Hyperdub

Vital transcendence of plague pace into rush, into revival.  Chemz is revival. Dolphinz is elevation. Burial revives. Burial elevates.

SMIRK “SMIRK” LP
Feel It

Alright, if you need to be sold instantly, just skip to second track Violent Game. It seemlessly combines three of my favourite songs ever: Life Of Crime (The Weirdos), Piss On Your Dog (Crime) & Scavenger Of Death (Bobby Sox). Basically one nasty giant guitar solo over a mid-paced stomper: my nirvana. The rest of the recordings follow a contrived familiarity, but each added guitar flash, bass walk or synth underlayer sets it against the pack.

Smirk is a one dude project out of LA, these recordings were originally released across 2 cassettes last year. Feel It Records provides them in one place for ease of consumption. This is one of those rare records where every utterance one mind makes is a good idea. In isolation the songs and interludes don’t make cohesive sense. When in sequence they transport you place to place whilst remaining on the theme of one persons idea of a good idea. The whole thing comes off wildly engaging, fun, fresh and insanely catchy. It’ll be hard to knock this one off the top of the pops come year’s end.

MOON RITUALS - "AURA / PAINTING A BIRD" 7"
I Heard A Whisper

Finally available after months of delay! Long elusive Moon Rituals, the primary collaborative output of Sarah Hardinman (of Brick Head and Deaf Wish) and Mikey Young (of... well, you know), makes a surprise return following their synth-drenched self-titled 2018 LP with this new 7" single on Club Seven.

"Aura / Painting A Bird" are a pair of tracks written, recorded, and produced remotely. In sharp contrast to the singularly grandiose soundscapes of their LP, these two tracks trade in the bedroom theatrics for the skip, hop, and snap of introspective Le Bon-esque guitar pop.

Aura might just be the accidental iso-anthem of 2020; a track about fucking off your friends and staying home to read books and chill with your plants. It all hits a bit different when you don't have any other choice, but as Sarah sings, "here's the change, don't fight against it", it's hard not to be inspired to make the most of our solitude.

Both hook-laden tracks feature dense layers of minimal pin-point melodies, intertwining and playing off one another before disappearing just as suddenly as they arrive. This melodic restraint is propelled with the addition of live drums from Boomgates' Shaun Gionis; a swing that (against all odds) keeps all the disparate elements in place.

Song of the summer, song of isolation. Song of making the most of the time you have, and song of finding new ways to connect with your friends. The return of Moon Rituals is a welcome one.

WASTE MAN - “ONE DAY IT’LL ALL BE YOU” LP
Feel It

This debut LP from Nola punks Waste Man is a totally unique jagged exploration of varying influences that is as quick to shift its shape as your fist will be when it throws itself along to this. By refusing concrete definition, the elements at play here blend classic punk energies with something completely left of field, which in its modernity is on par with a lot of FEEL IT‘s current roster but WASTE MAN‘s daringness to explore fondly reminds us of PIOUS FAULTS in particular. With a strong stench of Jameson, the sonic elements tread a paradoxical marriage between modern egg(URANIUM CLUB/LITHICS) with that of a classic edge(MEAT PUPPET/MINUTEMEN) that are all just as even with some of the more jerky/No-Wavey moments that poke their heads in and out. Hell you can even throw a bit of down-trodden cosmic-country of J MASCIS in the guitar playing here at times. The most ear-catching feature through-out this stomping LP is WASTE MAN’s ability to write a god-damn knee-smasher of a chorus (seek ‘Run All Night’/‘Wishful Thinking’ in particular) that as a result serve up big-time ECSR/BRONX energy. The unpredictability across something that should feel so familiar makes for a truly one-of-a-kind and constantly entertaining debut that feels like it was born out of a simple necessity to just fucking rock.
Guest review by F. Sinclair

EXECUTION – “SILENTLY IT GROWS” 7”
Hardcore Victim / Miracle Cortex

Sick, sick, sicko hardcore music from Melbourne miracles of the morose, Execution. Devolution at its finest, “Silently It Grows” sees Execution spinning tales of disillusion and woe woven into guttery anthems for the pantheon of punk congregational hymnbook. The whole thing sprints and unravels so quickly that you’d almost be forgiven for missing the grim skeleton that holds this EP together for the rotting flesh that invariably melts away from it with each passing moment. It does bring a sense of sadistic pleasure to announce that I believe this record’s arsenal is just as threatening played at the intended 45RPM or the delusional freak speed of 33RPM – certainly not hurt by the production, which is nuclear, to say the least, as can be expected from the long reigning noise house Hardcore Victim Records and the new mutant on the block Miracle Cortex. The record design being (in)appropriately black-and-white-cut-and-paste testament to the violent relics of human (and punk) history, serving as reinforcement for the toe-tag accompanying the EP:  Do you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing? At the intended volume (read: APOCALYPTICALLY HIGH) this truly packs a megaton punch and this mess is a pleasure to wallow in. Stand or fall or slam into a wall for the psychotic anthems contained within, it’s your choice, but either way I don’t think anyone makes it out alive.

*Lulus is amped to have early bird of bad omen access to this beastie, so pick it up and throw it down on your turntable before anybody else.

KYOUFU SHINBUN - "DEATH TRAINING" 3xLP BOX SET
Bitter Lake Records

Bitter Lake returns with their most ambitious project yet; Death Training, a 3 LP box set reissue of Kyoufu Shinbun, the solo output of Hokkaido based cult hardcore figure Proletariat Honma.

Forming the project in 1986, Honma strived to blend his obsessions with hardcore punk, Japanese noise music, electronix and Noroi (Japanese occult worship, analogous to western left-hand-path magick) into this fiercely independent solo outfit.

The material collected on Death Training replicates in full the material Kyoufu Shinbun released during an extremely fertile period between May 1993 and Feburary 1994. Self releasing a four song cassette on the 13th of every month, each release reflected a different type of death (burning, drowning, microwave, explosion, starvation, pressure, suffocation, freezing, "abdominal death", and electric shock), and featured detailed ero guro art by Shinya Tsujimura.

Death Training presents each of these tapes fully remastered from the source with the assistance of Proletariat Honma. The set also includes "Falling To Death", a Kyoufu Shinbun flexi disc released in 1991 that serves as the logical precursor to the Death Training series, and an 18 page booklet with Shinya Tsujimura's full artwork for the 10 cassette releases.

Almost instantly sold out from the label, Lulu's is very proud to be stocking the very last copies of this important and exemplary archival release.

LAVENDER FLU - “MOW THE GLASS” LP
In The Red

Album begins with a lushly warbling guitar echo which quickly goes from Faust IV to the Beach Boys, before a full blown Rolling Stones explosion. This is like, thirty seconds into the record, and you get the feeling you’re gonna be in good hands. You’re not wrong. This is pure treacle with a hint of tobacco and pot recorded straight to tape and it’s a heck of a tonic. Somehow alternative rock AKA alt rock AKA quiet n loud rock (with little bits of a country tease for good measure) made by deadbeats and dropouts became a dirty word, and I kind of get why, but I also know that it’s the most fitting genrefication for some of the hand down coolest and most memorable tunes (absolute tunes!) this side of the 70’s. If that scares you off, get over yourself and get yourself a drink. Trust me, you’ll love it. Lavender Flu blend the strange side of 60’s music, country almost-ballads, 80’s slacker introspected heart sleeves and the occasional guitar overdose that came with larger amplifiers of the following decades, and armed with the songwriting knowledge handed down by punks of all times and places (you, too, can write a pop song!) Whether you’re a fan of The Replacements, Dinosuar Jr, The Strokes or the silk and leather purveyed by perpetual favez the mighty Mystic 100’s, this is a lemon worth squeezing. And for God’s sake save some for your whisky & soda.

EXEK - “GOOD THING THEY RIPPED UP THE CARPET” LP
Lulu’s Sonic Disc Club

'Good Thing They Ripped Up the Carpet' is the latest LP of deconstructed enchantment from Australian post-punks EXEK.

One reaches for the word dreamy but gravitates to phantasmagoric, which also means to change or shift, such as a scene composed of many elements.

That describes the technical birth of this LP, too: side A is new material that was written and recorded in 2020, while side B is a compilation of tracks that have been used to contribute to other people’s releases.

Since the second half is an amalgamation of tracks across both place and time– the oldest is from 2015, while the newest hasn’t been released yet – it only made sense for side A to mimic that variegated quality.

Hip-hop, krautrock, ambient, straight PiL worship, new wave romantic pop,field recordings from Japan, and a solo that tips the hat at Black Sabbath’s “NIB” all figure into this wide-ranging collection of songs. EXEK tends to be classified as post-punk, but they excel most at the lesser-punk elements of that descriptor; trippy dub, meditative motorik and self-sampling as sonic propellant.

Menacing textures, eerie and introspective moods, majestic lyrics, manipulated voices, bending time and warping pitch. Good Thing They Ripped Up the
Carpet braids together all these disparate threads, a funhouse ride through refracted memories and future worlds - Ana Gavrilovska

PIPYU - "PIPYU" LP + 7"
Bitter Lake Recordings

Bitter Lake deliver this month's 1-2 punch with an excavation of the almost entirely unknown 1980s Japanese punk band Pipyu. Blending influences of The Stalin and contemporary Japanese hardcore with a love of The Doors and the then-emerging new wave, Pipyu landed on a sound that cherry picks from the best of these disparate influences and delivers an entirely unique brand of twisted hardcore.

Presenting their debut demo in full over the LP, Bitter Lake have also included a 7" of material recorded in 1990 at the end of the band's initial life. These two tracks show the same influences as their demo, but with the approach almost entirely flipped - gorgeous new wave punk tracks with a hard, weird edge. Another slam dunk from one of the best.