Rest assured, for once the lack of meaningful content here of recent hasn’t down to apathy, but more the fact that all of my allotted music-time over the past few months seems to have been spent watching live music, making music and (gulp) even promoting a bit of music [obligatory self-promotion links: 1 / 2].

Though road-hardened punks may justifiably scoff at our puny endeavours, last month’s tour was a hell of a lot of fun, and left me feeling rather joyously reconnected to the world of DIY music and the fine people who enable / inhabit it. (Random pics visible here and here.)

Since then things haven’t let us much. Bong gig in Camden was obviously a colossal highlight, and I’ve got a ticket to see Pelt play for the first time this weekend, for god's sake. That aside, I’ve also been coming to the belated realisation that London is absolutely swarming with vicious, new self-taught punk bands at the moment, all seemingly keen to hack away the macho/muso culture that has built up around that music for so long, returning it to the basics of noise, rage, simplicity and chaos.

Rather than just being confined to one or two isolated examples of the form (Frau, Good Throb), there seems to be another one of these great bands popping up every time we leave the house at the moment, all, like most recent London music of worth, driven to a state of manic ferocity by the sheer shittiness of trying to continue to live in this city whilst maintaining some degree of personal dignity.

Maybe I’m over-thinking things here, but if the notion that urban creativity often flourishes when space is cheap and capital is scarce (cf: New York in the ‘70s and ‘80s), what happens in the opposite situation, when intense concentration of populous & capital, malign government policy and over-inflated property market do their best to bulldoze pretty much everyone into poverty? London’s current punk bands provide a pretty eloquent answer to this question I think, and it’s probably time to call “scene!” on the fuckers and invite some snooping journalists to get it all mixed up. Dregs, Bona HC, Snob, Semi, Cianuro – all are very worthy of your time.

Not entirely disconnected from all that, this month’s Static Shock weekend felt like a bit of a marathon, and, god knows, I only went to about half of it (wussed out on the ultra-h/c Saturday night show, and missed the Hard Skin headlined Friday due to prior obligations). The bits I did go to though were fucking brilliant – an electrifying few days, blessed with line-ups that barely ever the quality dipping below “great”, with frequent stylistic and demographic hand brake turns doing a lot to remind us of the kind of variety and energy still lurking filed under ‘punk’ in yr local record emporium (or, more likely, bypassing it altogether and going straight to the distros and merch table sales, as is only sensible).

Here then are five of the best bands I saw at these events, discounting the aforementioned Snob, who are limited to one shout-put per post.

5. The Splits

Playing early afternoon at the Power Lunches matinee show, these Helsinki-based ladies & bonus gent easily overcame their generic rent-a-punk band name with a set of dense, Wipers-esque clean-toned guitar jangle, smoke-lunged vox and relentless forward momentum. Really nice guys too. Recommended.

http://the-splits.bandcamp.com/

4. The Number Ones

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen these Dublin power-pop stalwarts once or twice in the past, but I dug their total oddball status on the Static Shock line-up (a paisley shirt and a ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo’ jacket patch certainly stand out amid the leather and hoodies), and I dug their music too. Though not in any way exceptional within its genre, it is realised with as much muscle, energy and good feeling as is possible in 2014, and brought to us by some fellas who know how to get down together and really make it work. A couple of nice, unexpected covers (The Byrds’ ‘Feel a Whole Lot Better’, The Clean’s ‘Oddity’) pushed them from “pretty good” toward “GREAT” at the Saturday Power Lunches show, and when they took the stage on a bleary and hungover Sunday after a couple of middling hardcore bands, I’ll admit it was a joy to just hear some good ol' rock n’ roll.

the highlight was an ad-hoc blast through The Undertones ‘Get Over You’, used to cover a string-break incident from one of the guitarists. Hearing him restringed and ploughing back into the song just after the other guy knocked out a ragged, Bob Stinson-esque solo was a real “raise your drink in salute” moment. The #1s are certainly never going to change your world or even your afternoon, but if you’re just in the mood for the kind of band that’ll kick some ass at your wedding reception or whatever – look no further.

http://staticshockrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-number-ones

3. Perspex Flesh

Straight-up hardcore is just swell, don’t get me wrong, and I'm glad it's there - but for me personally,it takes something extra for it to really make much of an impression. Thankfully, Perspex Flesh BRING IT, in capitals, proffering a vile, monstrous wall of aggro that’s something like the sonic equivalent of a musclebound, green-skinned mutant stalking toward you with a spiked bat. This is nasty stuff, building a sense of total unease and impending catastrophe solely through the noise dripping through the PA stacks, and without the need for the band to start strutting or getting in people’s faces. Not that they could if they wanted to, bless ‘em – the vocalist looks so exhausted after each song, he can barely bring himself to stagger a few steps and mutter incoherently before the next maelstrom commences.

I realise that describing somebody’s guitar tone as “totally sick” is a teenage punk/metal uber-cliché, but in the case of Perspex Flesh I mean it in a fairly literal sense - the sheer level of screeching filth this guy lays down is remarkable, occasionally breaking up the near-Skullflower-ish skree with a few of those evil little tri-tone riffs that will, until the day I die, always remind me of the music that used to play when the Decepticons were stomping about in the old Transformers cartoons (not a complaint). Rhythm section keep it together with a brutal, lumbering swing that puts me in mind of the kind of guys who might be playing in a new line-up of Black Flag in an alternate world where Greg Ginn isn’t a dickhead, and there you have it – a fucking beast of a radiation-damaged hc/grind nightmare, reminding me (more through sheer atmosphere than actual musical similarity) of ‘Scum’ era Napalm Death and early Earache stuff in general… and there are few higher compliments than that. As a closing band for the weekend, it’s more “fuck off, return to your homes” than “cheers folks, see you next time”, but I’m tired and cold so I can get with that.

http://perspexflesh.bandcamp.com/

2. Personnel

I saw this lot a few years back, opening the bill on a busy gig on a boat, and wasn’t particularly impressed. I don’t know if they’ve changed in the interim or if I’ve changed, but seeing them again, still opening the bill for a few early risers at the Power Lunches matinee, I thought were bloody great. Louie of The Love Triangle / Shitty Limits plays some fantastic, near Wilko Johnson-ish choppy / wiry clean-toned guitar, whilst the vocalist (whom I’m SURE I’ve seen in at least one or two other band s- reminder anyone?) belies his smart casual pub-bloke demeanour by coming on like as witty and charismatic a frontman as you could wish to encounter at 2pm on a rainy Saturday. Drummer is A1 too, and it’s nice to see the vocalist from Frau filling in the gaps on bass.

Like the now disbanded(?) Hygiene and many of the groups I was going on about earlier in this post, Personnel deal primarily with the kitchen sink banalities and sundry indignities of life in the UK, but, notably, do so with a dry sense of humour and a touch of soul rather than just inchoate rage. I like it a lot. If you want a snappy quote for the CD sticker, think an Ian Svenonious band as directed by Ken Loach and you’ll probably be dreadfully misled by such platitudes, but fuck it, it's late, it’ll do.

http://doubledotdash.bandcamp.com/album/ep

1. Rakta

For the best part of sixty years, we’ve been waiting for people to run out of new stuff to do with the basic guitar/bass/drums set-up, and it doesn’t look likely to run out of steam any time soon. Add a couple of Boss delay pedals to the equation then, and imagine the mileage a few driven individuals can get out of that. An all-female Brazillian band playing moody, ambitious sci-fi-inflected punk with loads of harsh noise and extreme use of effects, Rakta are, in short, probably the most exhilarating new band I’ve seen this year.

Not everyone’s cup of tea maybe (the vocalist’s monotone howl has a bit of a Zola Jesus-ish gothic bombast thing to it that may put some off), but with a solid base of relentless pounding from the rhythm section and a relentlessly imaginative skree from the guitar, bits of unidentifiable echoing racket whiplashing around the place, and just a hellish energy and sense of weird, unholy evocation going on… man. We were lucky enough to see them twice over the weekend, and on both occasions I was left speechless. They’re playing again in Peckham next Tuesday – you’ll find me front row.

They’re currently midway through a mammoth US / Europe tour, so if they’re pitching up anywhere near you – drop everything and get along. Just a fantastically exciting band. You'll be hearing more about them in these pages, I'd imagine.

http://rakta.bandcamp.com/album/s-t

Labels: blather, live reviews, Personnel, Perspex Flesh, punk, Rakta, The Number Ones, The Splits