More great live shows for you from last year! Who’s in the top half of the list?
#15: Johnny Jewel – September 25, 2025 – Levitation Austin, Austin, TX
Mr. Jewel opened for his own band, Desire, and, for my money, put on the best show of the night at the first day of Levitation Austin last year. It was a showcase of his film scores and covers of other film music ranging from his score to Drive to a David Lynch tribute and giallo-horror tracks.
#14: The Black Angels – September 28, 2025 – Levitation Austin – Austin, TX
The Black Angels always play Levitation. It’s their festival, after all. They help curate it. It was another fine set from them that included many tracks they don’t play often – one of the advantages of not having to promote a new album.
These Dutch funk-rockers played their first gig in the U.S. ever at Levitation Austin last year and had the entire place jumping by the end of it. This was easily the grooviest show of the entire weekend, and everyone was buzzing the rest of the day afterwards.
#12: DITZ – June 27, 2025 – Levitation France – Angers, FR
This was blistering post-punk in a heat wave that had gripped almost the entire county. You can see the dust being kicked up from the mosh pit in that photo due to the arid conditions of the park in Angers where Levitation France took place last year. The lead singer had run off-stage, into the nearby lake, and returned covered in seaweed by the end.
#11: A Place to Bury Strangers – September 28, 2025 – Levitation Austin – Austin, TX
The Palmer Event Center in downtown Austin, where Levitation Austin took place last year, is a big venue…and it still wasn’t big enough to keep the volume of APTBS from flattening you as soon as you entered the place. Lead singer and guitarist Oliver Ackermann used the high ceiling to his delight by tossing his now-famous “half-guitar” sky high multiple times. Two friends who’d never seen them until now were left stunned by the end. “That’s like an assault,” my friend Wes said, wide-eyed and not knowing how else to describe it.
Mandy, Indiana sign to Sacred Bones and announce their new album, URGH, out February 6th, with lead single “Magazine.” On URGH, Mandy, Indiana is a force of uncanny nature, grafting together a record that is as much a call to action as a parlay into oblivion and transcendence. Following their acclaimed 2023 debut, i’ve seen a way, URGH finds the band expanding their far-reaching sound with each member — vocalist Valentine Caulfield, guitarist and producer Scott Fair, synth player Simon Catling, and drummer Alex Macdougall — actively taking part in the songwriting process. Across ten tracks, Mandy, Indiana interpolate their own unconventional language into a mantra for self-determination and resilience, forging a template for a brighter future before it fades to black.
Co-produced and co-mixed by Fair and Daniel Fox of Gilla Band, much of URGH was written during an intense residency at an eerie studio house in the outskirts of Leeds and recorded across Berlin and Greater Manchester. The process was shaped by adversity with both Caulfield and Macdougall undergoing multiple rounds of surgeries in the same time frame as the album was being written and recorded. The harrowing experience and the exhaustion of their respective recoveries bleed into the surreality of Caufield’s writing, blurring the line between inner turmoil and external chaos.
URGH is deeply personal, yet also reflects the violent, fractured state of the wider world as Caulfield’s lyrics grapple with assault, systemic indifference, and the omnipresence of pain. While most of the lyrics are in her native French, the emotional clarity cuts through regardless of language. Caulfield still uses her voice as a distorted instrument and a weapon, oscillating between equal parts playful and eviscerating, showcased on today’s single, “Magazine.” The throbbing siren-sound of the song finds the band garnering drama from the juxtaposition of quiet moments and explosive commotion as Caufield sings in French: “Abandon / All hope / Because tonight / I’m coming for you.” The accompanying visualizer was directed by Stephen Agnew.
Commenting on the song, Caulfield explains: “‘Magazine’ is the expression of the frustration and deep-seated violence I felt while attempting to recover from being raped. Just like most victims of sexual assault, I will never get justice, and just like most perpetrators, my attacker will never be punished. My therapist encouraged me to channel my anger into something productive, so here it is: my primal, screaming call for retribution. It is the only way I will ever get to say to my rapist: you hurt me, so I’m going to hurt you.”
Although there are still undeniable “bangers” across the album, from the bristling techno of “Cursive” to the frazzled rap of “Sicko!” featuring billy woods, URGH feels hewn with precise cinema. Fair and Macdougall explain that “a lot of the record is a remix of itself,” a cohesion of the band’s aptitude for collaging sounds and ideas that could operate as a film score or an industrial club night. Where i’ve seen a way drew from escapism, URGH (even from the reactive nature of the title alone) belongs in the physical world, and the artwork by the artist Carnovsky, featuring an anatomical illustration of Andreas Vesalius, underscores the record’s visceral confrontation with the body and its limits.
For Mandy, Indiana, the truth is the only way through. In 2025, the ability to make art that is seen and heard is its own form of protest, and directly addressing these issues is its own reclamation of power and strength in solidarity. URGH is a cathartic first step toward healing and a refusal to let the conversation die.
Mandy, Indiana will tour across Europe next year with shows in London, Paris, Berlin and more. All dates are listed below.
Mandy, Indiana Tour Dates Wed. March 25 – London, UK @ Heaven Fri. March 27 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club Sat. March 28 – Glasgow, UK @ Room 2 Wed. April 8 – Dunkirk, FR @ Les 4 Ecluses Thu. April 9 – Paris, FR @ Petit Bain Sun. April 12 – Cologne, DE @ Bumann & Sohn Tue. April 14 – Copenhagen, DK @ Huset Wed. April 15 – Berlin, DE @ Urban Spree Thu. April 16 – Hamburg, DE @ MS Stubnitz Fri. April 17 – Tilburg, NL @ Roadburn Sat. April 18 – Rotterdam, NL @ Motel Mozaique
November 19, 2025 – Legendary rock drummer Josh Freese will release his new album, Just A Minute, Vol. 2, on November 28, 2025, via Pearl Jam co-founder Stone Gossard’s Loosegroove Records. The wildly inventive follow-up to his first installment, released in 2021, once again crams 25 songs into 25 minutes, with every track landing precisely at the one-minute mark. Chaotic, often hilarious, and undeniably hook-heavy, tracks like “God Gave Rock N’ Roll To You, Satan Wants It Back,” “I Didn’t Know I Recorded With Avril,” and “Wasted With The Ween” showcase Freese’s punk rock roots, sharp wit, and musical versatility. The album’s first single and video, “Cybertruck LOL,” is out now (listen/share here).
“This is the Kill Bill 2 of rock records. The sequel is as good, if not better, than the first one,” says Freese. “I’m proud of it and think I finally got all the 60-second songs out of my system.”
Recently profiled in The New York Times, Freese is among the most revered drummers in modern rock music today, keeping time for some of the biggest and most influential rock bands in history, including Guns N’ Roses, Weezer, Foo Fighters, A Perfect Circle, and Nine Inch Nails. He has helped breathe new energy into legendary acts like Devo and The Replacements and has played on hundreds of studio recordings spanning artists as stylistically wide-ranging as Bruce Springsteen, Katy Perry, the Dwarves, and Lana Del Rey.
The Long Beach, CA-based drummer brings that same versatility to Just A Minute, Vol. 2 as he zips between blistering punk, quirky pop, groove-driven rock, and even delicate piano instrumentals, while exploring themes ranging from his own personal reflections to absurdist humor to biting social commentary. Indeed, the collection plays like a rapid-fire rollercoaster of genre-bending micro-anthems. True to the axiom that less is more, Freese proves you can say a lot in just sixty seconds.
Photo By Lyle Bell | L-R Clint Frazier, Graeme MacKinnon
Home Front reveal new single and video “Eulogy”. The cathartic punk hymn “is a reflection on what it means to lose the people we care about,” the band tells. “In these turbulent times we recognize death comes for us all, but it’s the recognition of someone’s lasting impact that leaves its imprint on us. We all have scars, but wear ours proudly as we move forward into the haze.” “Eulogy” is the latest preview of Watch It Die, their new full-length coming November 14 via La Vida Es Un Mus
For decades Home Front’s Graeme MacKinnon and Clint Frazier have embedded themselves in grass roots music making, community building, and the overpowering ebbs and flows of diy punk. Formed in 2020, they’ve given their lifetime of experience a chance to distill and then power into this musically omnipotent project which equally conjures textured Tangerine Dream sounds in a film montage, or the pummelling soundtrack to the first steps taken towards winning the fight of your life.
Home Front holds on to a particular kind of passion. The sort of thing that guides you – like a climbing vine steadily blanketing your bests and worsts, cutting through changes and impasses; victory and loss. MacKinnon and Frazier’s nod to influences and the themes of their lyrics are direct and detailed while maintaining enough creative distance to feel universal and unique. The production has again been bolstered by a team of long time confidants making a huge and unique record under the humble and hard working circumstances of remote pre-production and choosing to do their recording in home studios in their home town in Edmonton, Alberta.
The architecture of Watch It Die is simple – 12 songs of danceable, hummable, rousing and honest music that only Home Front could make. The emotion of this LP is what solidifies these musical notions into meaningful art. “For us, ultimately, this is music that comes out of loss and heartbreak and failure, but I hope people have a good time listening to us. You can get rowdy, you can get emotional, you can do whatever you want, but maybe with all of that freedom, we all take a second to reflect on all our fallen brothers and sisters and friends who may have slipped away.”
On previous revered recordings Games of Power (2023) and Think of the Lie(2021), Frazier and MacKinnon gave us a snapshot of a cynical and alienating world. A place where hope was tempered by insignificance, exhaustion takes us, and where 2,000,000 voices screaming in unison can still go unheard. Watch It Dieinstead of asking us why and how we got here, struggling to cope with the sadness of a desperate world, brings us their “step forward” moment. A dose of optimism and ownership in the bleakest of times in which maybe it doesn’t have to feel so bad to be alone or desperate. Where the passage of time is not coloured by the nostalgia of a lost youth but more toward the celebration of wisdom earned. Watch it Die owns the ills it describes and catapults us alongside its creators who have the confidence and presence of mind to live beyond their limitations.
Watch It Die is a road map of hope. MacKinnon and Frazier state: “For all of us in Home Front, ‘Watch It Die’ comes at a very transformative time. Geopolitically, musically and in our personal lives. With friends and close family members dying, to massive uncertainty around the world, this album encapsulates what it’s like for us to step into a ‘new world’ where all the old adages of ‘everything is gonna work out fine’ feel like a joke. We watch rich people get richer while the rest of us struggle just to get by. We watch colonizers kill without consequence and in an age of information at our finger tips we watch people choosing to be ignorant to what’s going on around them. ‘Watch It Die’ speaks about our own humanity, a rebirth into a new world and how we can never go back to the way things were. We suffer for their dreams, but in saying that we must recognize the importance of our own community and look to energize them to build a better way of life. We have always been an anti-war, anti-genocide, pro-peace band. We are against crimes to human rights and all of those struggling through the horrors of imperialism. We stand with the people of Palestine and we stand with the Canadian Indigenous communities who struggle to uphold treaty rights as well as basic human rights like clean drinking water and generational trauma. One takeaway from our music is to make a safe space where our community can come together to air out grievances and find a better way to a new future.”
Home Front have confirmed a run of West Coast dates including San Francisco, Sacramento and two nights in Los Angeles at The Palladium supporting Cock Sparrer on November 22 and 23. See below for a full list of dates and stay tuned for additional touring announcements. Home Front’s touring members Brandi Strauss on bass, Ian Rowley on guitar, and Warren Oostlander on drums.
Home Front Live Dates:
Nov 20: Sacramento, CA – The Starlet Room Nov 21: San Francisco, CA – Thee Parkside Nov 22: Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Palladium # Nov 23: Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Palladium ! Dec 13: Winnipeg, MB – The Handsome Daughter + Dec 19: Calgary, AB – Palomino * Dec 20: Edmonton, AB – Starlite Room ^ Feb 06-08: The Hague, NL – Grauzone Festival
# w/ Cock Sparrer, Dillinger Four, Castillo ! w/ Cock Sparrer, Dillinger Four, Generacion Suicida + Record Release Show w/ Imploders, Pure Impact * Record Release Show w/ CloseTalkers, Puppet Wipes, Poltergeist ^ Record Release Show w/ Languid, Real Sickies
I hadn’t been to Indianapolis’ Old National Centre since it was called the Murat Temple Theatre…and that was sometime in the 1990s. Entry was quick, and the woman checking IDs and handing out “21+” wristbands told us, “Straight ahead and down the stairs.” I figured Osees were playing in the large performance space in the building. I figured wrong. They were playing two floors below street level in a room the size of an average wedding reception hall.
Stone pillars on the mosh pit’s four corners.
Low ceilings, no windows, two entrances / exits, and a lot of people. My first thought was, “It’s going to be loud as hell in here.” I also saw many people who weren’t well dressed for an Osees show, possibly because they’d never seen them live before now. There were women in high heels, men in hooded sweatshirts and stocking caps, and a majority of the crowd without earplugs.
My prediction about the volume immediately was proven correct when, all the way from Japan, DMBQ took the stage to open the show and unloaded a crazy set of noise / kraut / punk / acid jazz / chaos. Lead guitarist and singer (and journalist) Shinji Masuko) was a wild man, drooling, slapping and punching himself, kicking the air, and creating a collapsing wall of sound while drummer Shinji Wada played stuff that would make many prog-rock drummers jealous and bassist Maki was a cool anchor the entire time. Again, you could tell that most of the crowd had no idea how to react to so much sound in such a small space. They had a lot of new fans by the end of their set.
Dynamite Masters Blues Quartet
Osees came out almost immediately after DMBQ finished crushing us, set up their gear, and started their wild, sweaty set at 9:01pm. Any place is a good place to see Osees, but a small space like the one we were in is perfect. The band and their fierce, energy is right there and it almost overpowers you.
A rare calm moment.
They tore through favorites like “Carrion Crawler,” “The Dream” (during which I started the crowd surfing, you’re welcome Indianapolis), and a fun, somehow even more raucous version of “Contraption” (with bassist Tim Hellman being an absolute beast with his groove).
It was a set of many classic cuts from them, with noting newer than material released in 2018 (“C” from Smote Reverser, which closed the show). This might have been because they hadn’t played an Indianapolis show in a long time. Lead singer / guitarist John Dwyer apologized at the start for them not playing there in many years: “Hey, Indianapolis. I’m sorry we never come here but (drummer) Dan (Rincon) hates it…No, I’m only kidding. He hates that fucking joke.”
A much louder moment.
“I Come from the Mountain” (again, with a killer bass line from Hellman), “Tidal Wave,” and “Ticklish Warrior” were big hits with the crowd, and I was happy to hear old cuts like “I Was Denied” (from 2010’s Warm Slime, the first Osees record I bought) and “Meat Step Lively” (from 2009’s Help).
The pit, as you might imagine, was a sweatbox being in such a small space. I had to back out after “Tidal Wave” (almost halfway through the show) to avoid overheating and burning the rest of the few calories I had in me. I slugged down a big cup of tonic water and then spent the rest of the show out of the pit but within view of the stage. I overheard a woman, seeing them for the first time, say, “They’re playing all my favorites.”
Mikhail Galkin and Jay Anderson, sometimes known as Lammping, are a Toronto duo known for producing beats, combining genres, and making interesting, and sometimes weird, decisions that create intriguing music you feel like you’ve heard before…but you’re not sure.
Nowadays, the duo have released the first of four experimental EPs — Never Never, this one with rockabilly one-man-band Bloodshot Bill, whom John Waters once described as “Roy Orbison with a head injury.” Take someone like that and put them in a studio with trip-hop and psych-rock music producers and you get a fun record.
The opening title track alone, with its brush beats, looped saxophone, and upright bass is enough to stop you in your tracks as Bill sings / raps about an unexpected love connection. The somewhat melted guitar on the instrumental “Coconut” oozes into mind-melting beats. “One and Own” is a fun example of Waters’ “head injury” description of Bill as he sings about his girlfriend but sounds like he might be punch-drunk.
“0 and 1” is a fun instrumental trip-hop cut that would fit right onto a St. Germain or Air album. Bill’s vocals on “Won’t Back Down” sound like he’s trying to keep up a brave face while crying into his beer. The gooey, chewy beat loops and western guitar on the track are slick — especially the guitar solo. In a just and right world, the quirky instrumental “Anything Is Possible” would’ve been remixed by MFDOOM by now. The EP ends with “Nitey Nite.” You can just barely hear Bill’s backing vocal sounds in it, which give way to his whistling (which is sprinkled throughout the record) that sends us out with a grin.
The whole EP will keep you grinning. It’s a lot of fun and a great sign of things to come over the next three projects.
Those were the first words I heard about Day Two of 2025’s Levitation Austin musical festival as I walked toward the entrance of the Palmer Event Center. Some guy said this to his pal as they steeled themselves for the day to come. The guy was right, as the bright sun was brutal at times — especially at the outdoor stage.
I started indoors, both to avoid the peak sun and to see Hooveriii put on a solid set of psych-rock that bordered on grunge rock a couple times (which was fine by me).
Hooveriii (pronounced “Hoover Three”, not “hoovery.”)
Many of us ventured out into the sun to see Dutch disco funkers Yīn-Yīn play for the first time anywhere in the United States. They had the afternoon crowd jumping and were having a great time despite not being used to such heat.
Yīn-Yīn getting their sweaty groove on, and on all of us.
I had time for a chicken shawarma wrap (possibly the best food bargain at the festival) and some ice cream before heading back to the outdoor stage to see Model / Actriz put on a blistering set of queercore post-punk with lead singer Cole Haden prowling through the crowd while his bandmates played tight, snappy beats and riffs. Guitarist Jack Wetmore knows not only how to play, but the right moments not to play — a skill overlooked by many.
Model / Actriz bringing more heat than the afternoon sun.
I took some more time to hydrate and get a full meal (It’s a marathon, not a sprint.) before heading back indoors to join the large crowd for The Brian Jonestown Massacre, who played to a happy crowd — many of whom (at least around me) hadn’t seen them before now. It was a good set, with only minor issue when, believe it or not, Anton Newcombe decided his microphone had too much reverb.
Too much reverb? Never!
The Raveonettes were a welcome return to Levitation. I hadn’t seen them since 2013 when Levitation was still the Austin Psych Fest (which has returned in its own form). They still sound great and played classics and newer stuff.
Let’s rave on!
The biggest show of the night, and for the entire festival for me, belonged to TV on the Radio. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to see them, so their appearance at Levitation made the decision to fly here a no-brainer. They slayed it and had everyone jumping and moving. Their energy was infectious and immediate, and a great way to close the night.
Well worth the wait.
TVOTR didn’t close my night, however. I was so wired after their set that I walked over a mile to Elysium to see Past Self and Urban Heat. I knew we were in for a treat when Past Self’s bassist started the show by playing his guitar with a bow. What followed was a mix of desert rock (They’re from Las Vegas, Nevada.), New Romanticism, and dark wave.
Past Self. Are they ghosts, musicians, past incarnations of you?
Urban Heat are local heroes who play aggressive shoegaze mixed with post-punk anger. It’s good stuff, and they seem destined for big things. They reminded me a bit of early TVOTR, which was fitting because I bumped into TVOTR’s guitarist / multi-instrumentalist Jaleel Bunton at their show and got to thank him for the great set.
Urban Heat in the middle of the night.
Up next, psychedelia, indie rock, and a couple sets that might cause you to seek a chiropractor afterwards.
I’m going to call the September 25, 2025 Thursday night late shows of Levitation Austin 2025 as “Day Zero” since the official festival doesn’t start until September 26th. “Day -1” would’ve been September 24th when you could’ve seen Mdou Moctar, Beach Fossils, Strange Lot, Water Damage and other good bands.
The main festival has a new home — the Palmer Event Center pretty much in the middle of the city, and only has the “pub crawl” events (shows at various venues downtown) at night. As usual, there’s always at least one good band playing the Thursday night before Levitation to entice you into coming to town early. This year, “Day Zero” had several: Warmduscher and Starjunk 95 among them, and I opted for two other shows out of six you could attend.
I first went to Stubb’s BBQ for what would be the only show I would attend there the whole weekend (which felt odd): Kumo 99, Martin Rev, and Boy Harsher.
Kumo 99 kicking off Levitation with a good start.
I’d only heard one song from Kumo 99 before coming to Austin, so I didn’t know what to expect apart from some electro music. What I got was electro plus synthwave plus Japanese vocal punk rock. I was impressed, and so were a lot of others judging by the size of the line at their merch booth after their set.
Martin Rev will hit you with a key-tar and then put you in the Sharpshooter.
Up next was the legendary Martin Rev — one half of synth / punk pioneers Suicide. He came out in ripped-up leather pants, a sleeveless shirt, and goggles suitable for alpine skiing or for Brett “Hitman” Hart cutting a professional wrestling promo. What followed was a weird, loud no wave noise set that left most of the audience (who didn’t realize who he was) baffled. Rev was hammerfisting his keyboard through most of the set, bludgeoning us with distorted din. He sampled Bon Jovi, ZZ Top, and The Trammps at various points while singing / talking with so much reverb in his microphone that one guy in front of me just yelled, “What are you saying?” during a brief break in the noise. Rev even did a bizarre cover of Sam the Sham & the Pharohs‘ “Wooly Bully” at one point. A woman next to me said, “I hope I can be that cool at (age) seventy-seven. I’m ready for bed by eight and he’s out here doing his thing.” That “thing” being not giving a damn what people think and giving them more of an experience than a performance.
Boy Harsher winning over the crowd at the first note.
The crowd (with a big goth and queer contingent. Hell yeah!) for Boy Harsher was huge by the time they took the stage. They played much the same set as when I saw them at Levitation France months earlier — packing in pulsing synthwave with great electro dance beats. I found out from the woman next to me that they’d played a DJ set from the back of a truck the previous day and had done a record signing at End of an Ear in Austin. That’s way cool.
Johnny Jewel “covering” Chromatics.
Speaking of way cool things, I walked a half-block after Boy Harsher’s set to Elysium where I caught Johnny Jewel‘s great set of his film score and other music – which included a set from Drive, a salute to David Lynch, and even a different version of Chromatics‘ “Lady.” He played various clips from Lynch films, Twin Peaks, giallo films, and other oddities throughout it.
Desire instilling that in all of us.
Up next, and closing out Day Zero, was one of Jewel’s many side projects — Desire. They played a long set of lovely synthwave and electro-dance tracks, mostly about wanting, finding, and / or losing love. The crowd loved them, and the trio work well together. They even played two New Order covers (“Bizarre Love Triangle” and “Blue Monday” – with Jewel on lead vocals for the second) and Taylor Dane‘s “Tell It to My Heart” — which was a natural fit for lead singer Megan Louise.
It was a late night, but worth it. There’s a lot of good synthwave at Levitation this year, and Day One will end with more…but first there will be a lot of metal.
Keep your mind open.
All right, all right! I’ll get on it…And you spelled my name wrong again, David!
As the story goes, Man…Or Astro-Man?‘s Brian “Birdstuff” Teasley send a demo of the band’s music to legendary BBC DJ John Peel along with a note telling him to never play it on air because they didn’t want to be discovered and then forgotten like so many other bands who had been played on his show.
The trick worked, because Peel came to love MOAM? so much that he invited them to play on his show over a dozen times between 1993 and 2000. Many of those recordings were released as a limited box set, ROYGBIV – which quickly sold out in 2024. Thankfully, a deluxe second edition of it was released this year.
It’s jam-packed with MOAM?’s signature sci-fi surf, launching with “Rocketship XL-3.” “Invasion of the Dragonmen” samples an old Spider-Man adventure record. “Nitrous Burnout” is a tribute to the dangerous world of outlaw racing. “Transmissions from Venus” is one of their heavier tracks and loaded with fuzz. “A Mouthful of Exhaust” is another fun one about the smash-up racing lifestyle.
“Sadie Hawkins Atom Bomb” pushes the bass to the front and takes on a slight rough edge. The theme from The Munsters has been a long-time favorite of surf bands everywhere, and MOAM?’s version is a wild stomper that’s over before you can catch your breath, and “Gargantua’s Last Stand” is as raucous as its titular monster. “Name of Numbers” and “Special Agent Conrad Uno” feature some of the wildest guitar on the entire collection.
“Time Bomb” and “Put Your Finger in the Socket” are punk-surf, with the latter having a dangerous growl throughout it. “________ (Classified)” brings in a Theremin for good measure. “Sferic Waves” gets a little bit into horror-rock territory (which is fine by me).
MOAM? play tribute to Mr. Peel on a couple tracks in the collection, the first being “Inside the Head of Mr. John Peel” – which makes you think Mr. Peel had constant drumming and surf guitar on his mind. “Inside the Atom” is as fast and wild as you’ll hope it will be. “24 Hours” slows things down, but not by much. What’s the “Maximum Radiation Level”? I don’t know, but it sounds like MOAM? reach it on the track. “U-Uranus” is one of the few tracks with vocals and it’s about the seventh planet from the Sun…for the most part.
The guitars on “Man Made from CO2” warp like something teetering on the rim of a black hole. “9-Volt” is another rare track with vocals and “Television Fission” is a blast of rocket fuel that burns out almost before you notice it’s happening. “Welcome to the Wicky Wacky World of John Peel (The Wayward Meteor)” is a great one, mixing funky guitars with weird sounds, solid surf bass, and surf-punk drums. “Lo Batt” reminds me of early Devo tracks with its mix of odd synths, punk riffs, robotic vocals, and snappy drums.
“The Miracle of Genuine Pyrex” has one of the goofiest names and some of the most metal riffs. “Jonathan Winters Frankenstein” is a fun poke at the Edgar Winter Group. It’s not a cover of their classic “Frankenstein,” but you can still hear the influence. “With Automatic Shut Off” and “Rovers” are a bit mellow, and “Bombora” is their version of a classic surf-rock ripper. “Max Q” has cryptic vocals hidden behind the fierce riffs and rolling drums. “Don’t Think What Jack” wraps up the music, but there are still four more tracks of Birdstuff reading excerpts from Phillip K. Dick‘s Through a Scanner Darkly. Why? Heck, why not by this point?
It’s a wild, fun collection that flies by you like, well, a rocket. Blast off with it.
A compilation of twenty-two French disco and funk tracks from the 1970? Yes, please.
Kid Loco Presents French Funk Experience is loaded with gems you’d swear you heard in an obscure late night movie or while racing through a European airport – and a lot of these tracks are “library music” made for television and film. Take Bernard Estardy‘s killer “Gang Train” from 1972. The synth grooves are from 2072 and the drums are so tight you’d swear they were laid down by a drum machine and not a live human being…yet they are. Résonance‘s “OK Chicago” (1973) is loaded with sampled sirens, police radio chatter, and machine gun ricochets.
P.A. Dahan and Mat Camison break out the handclaps and the Hammond B-3 on “Pepper Drums” (1976). Estardy (who is all over this compilation either with his solo material or working with other artists) returns on the Doobie / Allman Brothers-like funk rocker “Vertigo Leitmotiv” from 1970. Trumpeter and band leader Pierre Dutour shows off his skill on 1974’s “Jungle Trumpet.”
Manu Dibango‘s “Africadelic” (1973) is a thrilling rush, and Pierre-Alain Dahan returns with Slim Pezin on the jaw-dropping, booty-shaking “Electronic Mutation” from 1976. Alain Goraguer‘s “Course de Ten” from 1973 wocka-wocka guitar riffs and “Le Baron” Estardy’s “Bongo Ring” from 1975 is, go figure, full of great hand percussion sounds. Sauveur Mallia, who played bass on Sid Vicious‘ cover of “My Way” no less, brings “All the Bass” and all the funk on this cut from 1979.
Speaking of bass, check out 1970’s “Indian Pop Bass” by Guy Pedersen with all it’s fat bass slaps, weird psych-flute notes, and prog-rock beats. The horn section on Big Jullien & His All Star‘s “Wake the Monster” from 1969 will knock you off your feet. Dahan and Camison’s “Long Playing Time” from 1976 has guitar in it that would make Steely Dan envious. Bernard Lubat‘s organ riffs on 1976’s “Aubergine Time” are outstanding. Ludovic Decosne and Pierre Daubresse‘s “Gloaming” from 1970 is delightfully fun and belongs in a Euro sex-comedy (if it’s not already in one).
Claude Engel gets all trippy with his guitar on the long version of “Belle Gueuse (A)” from 1972. The electric piano and bass on Raymond Guiot‘s “Basse Duetino” (1976) is so groovy you could almost put a turntable needle on it. André Ceccarelli‘s “Funk Number 2” (1970) is a perfect track for strutting / strolling at the club, and “Rythmiques Number 2” (1971) by Dahan is a quick beat drop you’ll want to sample in everything.
Tonio Rubio‘s “Red Medium” (1973) has slick guitar work, and even slicker organ grooves, throughout it. The prolific (over 10,000 tracks to his credit) Estardy comes back one more time for “Riviera Express” from 1973. The organ riffs on it are sometimes funky, sometimes freaky, and sometimes frightening. The compilation ends with 1973’s “Pepper Box” by The Peppers – who consist of Camison on keys, Dahan on drums, and Rubio on guitar. It’s a blast, full of great synth blasts, handclaps, and disco funk. Play it at every party.
This whole compilation is a great time and will cheer you up. You can’t help but groove to it. Blast it through your earbuds as you walk through Paris or down to the nearest boulangerie.
