Fake Last Name

Reviews

Fake Last Name Three Persuasion Domains EP

FAKE LAST NAME is the home-recording alter ego of Ronni What, one half of the Louisiana zolo duo SPLLIT, and while SPLLIT has been increasingly busy and touring relentlessly over the last few years, this new EP marks the first FAKE LAST NAME release since the project debuted with a short-run cassette in 2021. SPLLIT’s restless, kitchen-sink noise bursts have positioned them as something like the RESIDENTS for the egg-punk generation, and although FAKE LAST NAME draws from many of the same cracked-up impulses, Ronni ultimately reassembles them into something much more coolly disaffected while working solo. The A-side kicks straight into “Three Persuasion Domains,” centering blasé, perfectly over-it vocals (think Su Tissue or Lizzy Mercier Descloux at their most detached) which function as carefully structured lines for strangled no wave guitar and clattering drums to cross in impulsive strokes of color, only for the whole affair to be détourned as “Another Persuasion” on the B-side, with Ana da Silva of the RAINCOATS(!) applying spacious dub echo and glitchy electro accents to smooth out some of the more anxious edges of the original source material. The percussion/electronics-driven warble and deadpan, surrealist spoken word of “Gadfly” is equally great and almost ALGEBRA SUICIDE-like, very deserving of the second life that it’s been given here after first appearing on that earlier FAKE LAST NAME tape. Buy the physical record; the visuals and writing included in the packaging/insert are a crucial part of the FAKE LAST NAME experience—keeping the “art” in art-punk.

Fake Last Name It’ll Happen Again cassette

Shape-shifting post-punk from a new Baton Rouge, Louisiana solo endeavor dubbed FAKE LAST NAME, with scribble-scratch guitar, limber bass lines, skittish beats, and perfectly affectless vocals all assembled in a series of quick, economical audio bricolages that are decidedly offbeat, but not at the expense of an accessible and sneaky playfulness. There’s the sparse, concise ROSA YEMEN-style No Wave exercises “FFSN” and “Demeanor,” backmasked loops circling behind abstracted spoken vignettes and a singular fuzzed-out bass note repeated into oblivion on “Persona,” cowbell-accented deconstructed dance rhythms pushing “Window” forward, and the anxious, agitated twitch in “Service!” (and its dryly acidic “thank you, thank you for your service!” refrain) that hits a similar nerve center as MARAUDEUR’s modern redux of DIY Euro-wave, just with a touch more of a late ’70s US art-punk preoccupation. The real freak sound of now!