Back catalogue: Punk/Hardcore

Review: Japanese industrial noise duo The Grogerigegege are something of an urban legend within the underground music scene. Apparently meeting at a sex club where a shared appreciation for envelope pushing sex acts, punishing aural sonics and a bizarre avant-garde perspective on art would lock them together for ensuing decades of musical mayhem. Known for incorporating nudity, violence, broken glass and hoovers into their live set, the pair would even take a lengthy respite while one of the members simply disappeared for years on end before reconnecting with his counterpart. As If It Had Always Been Determined Since This Day Was Born transports listeners back to the pair's earliest forays into calculated extremity with blown out, overdriven remixes taken directly from the master tapes of their first 7" single released back in 1988. This includes the long sought after remaster of 'Mistress' originally used in the legendary Enoshima Beach Flexi Burning Live (which the pair opted to burn all original pressings of rather than make readily available). You do have to remember these are the same lads who sold dried out octopus tentacles in cassette cases during one tour as a limited release, and smashed up the master recording of another work and put the broken pieces in a metallic box that the listener shook to hear the album, hence the title You Are The Music Maker. If the utter lunacy of The Grogerigegege isn't detailed enough here, well this pressing comes complete with 5500 word essay-style liner notes penned by 55 year old Gero himself (Juntaro Yamanouchi).

Review: Offering fuzzy grunge-pop with doses of shimmering synths and emo angst, Ned Russin co-fronted Title Fight before halting in 2018, after which he began playing music as Glitterer. Now a full band, Glitterer returns with Rationale, combining 90s grunge, capital-R riffs a la The Stooges and a keyboard lead motif that gives self-deprecating melodrama. After relying more on synths for the entirely solo, home-recorded Glitterer LP in 2017, Russin involved collaborators on the crunchier Looking Through the Shades in 2019, and this trend heard him move towards driving indie rock grit with 90s influences, continued on 2021's Life Is Not a Lesson and now Rationale. Russin has a unique voice to boot, not instinctively a shoegazey spectre, instead more of a belting tenor, but this proves a beautiful combination.