Subtle Turnhips Septentinoriel LP
First record in seven years from France’s SUBTLE TURNHIPS—they’ve actually been at it since 1992(!), with the project going fairly quiet until a string of records in the mid-’00s to early ’10s that crested the wave of what could probably best be described as Terminal Boredom-core. Much like fellow lifers TYVEK, SUBTLE TURNHIPS reconstituted their art-punk garage/art-garage punk from the most primitive and trebly Messthetics entries, a FALL/Mark E. Smith-informed approach to both repetition and agitation, and shambling DIY (UK or otherwise) pop amateurism, and it’s thankfully still just as much of a gleefully chaotic jumble now as it ever was. “Laughing (Total Control)” détournés everyone’s favorite post-millennial Aussie post-punks and completely reflects the concept of laughing at the system in the process (if the system is tuning, timing, and the incorporation of more than three chords), “Tweedle Dum” and “Easy” scratch and collapse in an especially SWELL MAPS-damaged sort of way, and “Hitch Hike” (not a KLEENEX cover, as much as I would love to hear that) punctuates its stripped-down quasi-jangle with skronky meltdown noise blasts as if the TELEVISION PERSONALITIES had been more concerned with where Jad Fair lives. Fifteen fabulously fractured freak dispatches, total top-shelf shit.