# 359

So I live in Budapest mostly because I’m Hungarian. I tried to avoid telling this fact about myself but it seems like even some nice Russian guy have figured it out who wrote cool things about me on the internet. - I did not google my name this time it was a friend of mine - That’s the deal when you read Eastern Europe in my columns. You might have thought of that I’m polish and imagined my location to be grey and smell like cabbage but actually it’s totally dark and stinks of moonshine.
One of the few good things about being Hungarian is I can read whatever Laszlo Krasznahorkai writes. - Actually it’s Krasznahorkai Laszlo, as my real name is Vargyai Viktor. We use a switched order -. And there is no need for a middle man as a translator between us so not only his thoughts are reachable for me but also the selection of the words in his never ending sentences. I’m kinda obsessed with him lately and reading now one of his books called War and War made me wonder on the whole thing. It’s about this guy who goes crazy and travels from a small rural town in Hungary to New York because he thinks that’s the center of the world in this modern age. There he stays in a small room and creates a homepage about his message he feels like he has to share with eternity. The funny thing is about it is how we Hungarians are really alike. Even if we are at the center of the world we just stay in our dirty holes and think about the whole universe and we feel like whatever we are doing is soo important the whole world should know about it and when it’s done things will change. It also made me realize too something I already wrote in one of my columns. After all we all just live in rooms so why does a country matter that much?
Sadly it matters so much in some aspects. There are unseen lines what are drawn deep into us. There is distance and that’s the worst. The worst is when the distance between two places is not can only be counted in length. Actually the worst is when there is distance between you and the whole universe even if it’s just a small fucked up town where you’ve been tragically stick in.  
The room I used to live in faced a hill and in one of it’s bushes during the winters there was always fire burning. People lived there and it felt shattering to witness how just in few meters – aka. length in Europe - there is another world that is completely different than what I live in. Mine is about surviving the soul crushing reality of capitalism that sooner or later turns you into a lame adult their is to just survive life that has turned it’s back on them. I could see them and they might have seen me as well if they cared at all about those block of flats where my family owns a home. There was a border between us and at their end is the place everyone is afraid to end up.
It was also strange when I arrived to the states there was a line which till I haven’t stepped over I was afraid of and then I entered another world as I walked through. There are lines drawn by markets, politics, cultures languages, fortunes. And for some reason some people always just wanna be at the hot spot of these best circumstances.
I always believed the center of the world is where we feel good. And there are places for sure from where you should run away but there are situations you should run to or realize them around you and then stick to. A drunk dance in a bar is a drunk dance everywhere. It matters who does that and how and when and what you feel. There are those rooms. We are in them. And we should create and reach for the world to grab it and make it our own. But after all what matters is this nation less and universal thing: doing something or better doing something together. Creating and sharing. I got hugged at a weird birthday party in Berlin of some legendary german fast core band’s drummer where while most people were snorting cocaine I was talking to a really elfish looking Swedish guy who was a traveler. I never felt like I should move or anchor myself to the road thus I told him I look on places as if you don’t like them instead of escaping them you should try to make them better. With finding people with whom it will be better or just try and it will follow. Or realize there are things all around us that needs no place, time or culture. These things can’t go through google translation just through you. Like the noise of VOID. That blasting amazing sounds which come along with lyrics but you can understand one’s frustration even without the slightest knowledge of English as well. As we do non Italian speakers with WRETCHED.

Nowadays I love music or people who do things which are happening in rooms. Locked rooms where they are creating something that could not be held back. What launches them out into the world. When the world comes to your room to see what’s happening there. When from a hidden position from a beaten situation people rise up and do something undeniably good. When they become needed and thus free. Or they just feel good cause they have made it as they do what they want because they haven’t listened to anyone telling them what they can or cannot do. Aren’t they the real center of the world?
But after all like what is the center of the world? Is it Olympia? With all of it’s crazy, drugged out love jams and garden hardcore rippings all in a feedback mist? Haven’t you wished to live there in a long haired commune in some unlocked door punk house?  Was it Switzerland with the Hot Love era dozen perfection bands? Who recreated or reclaimed post punk, proto weird music? All those cold melodies which are still making our hearts warm?  With their own Joe Strummer aka the genius Rudolph Dietrich? Is it Tampa Florida with all the CULT RITUAL connected bands? Their noise, their beauty, their unstoppable and uncountable force of pure teenage angst? Or was it Italy with its totally fucked up mutant hardcore bands? Brazil? Spain? Washington DC? LA? People put these places on maps and you wish you would live there. But it always had to be people - the same part of nature you likely are too.
I live in Budapest and it has 2 million residents. San Francisco doesn’t have a million but there were more punks at every show, there is MRR, and every band I saw could play their instruments. They had amazing places, record shops and the whole city has a history. As just yours and everyone else’s but maybe it’s so far unwritten.   
But yeah as always it’s not this easy. And some people just wanna get by with life not ride it into a tamed horse. There come all the unseen lines made up by the always cruelty of this unequal world. Cause yeah you could even find your joy under the circumstance of poverty but most of us just wanna not be bothered with striving to get enough money for food or being afraid of losing our rooms. It’s like we would like to buy stuffs but we enjoy being ditch diggers. To wear patches that not only hold our cloths together but as symbols of stating it’s still us vs them. We are survivors of not joining a war. A meal is good if you prepare it with passion and patience not only at fancy restaurants. I go to the market where a top chef goes too and the veggies are cheap as well. But I know I’m in a better situation than so many people. And I see my friends in struggle with their conscience when they have to choose between free times or some fucked up corporate job. And how those who choose not to grow up rather choose to sooner or later go broke. It’s never the money we miss. We miss the privilege where we could afford to be poor but still not have to be in a class struggle.
Guess I’m lucky for this cause even if I still feel the lack of stability with a better job I have million things that keep me forget the danger that’s in the corner of my everyday’s. I can entertain myself and i want many of my friend to be part of this as well. I’m just sometimes scared. Because if I had a job that pays me good then with all the other things I do I would feel like I made it. And if I made it that would mean it’s the end. I don’t feel ready for that. I’m 26 but I feel like I’m 16. Also I’m afraid with the chance to grow up I will stop wanting to be young. Not to not be able to do my things but not want to do them on the first base. I remember I wanted to leave Hungary only for to see better shows and have better chances to entertain myself. Now I wanna stay here forever cause I have found so many good people with whom we make amazing things. Now with a friend of mine we booked almost all of our contemporary favorites to play here. But it’s heartbreaking how my friends tell me they are happy cause we are doing things but they wish we will carry on. But it’s me who want them to carry on. I want to trust them. Because when we book a show we not only book it for ourselves we book it cause we believe many people will come and it will be a great night of punk joy.
I really hated the movie Children of Men for the same reason everybody loved it so much. The backgrounds. With all those immigrants kept in cages waiting to be deported back. And I have no idea how is it to be an immigrant, how is it when even with the risk of being deported back and before that to be kept like an animal feels. And my rage comes at the point where I can’t understand this fucking world why is it making people to choose this? But at the same time I just feel that many people just go to live elsewhere cause they are running away from themselves and the real tragedy is what I just wrote that even millions of people can’t decide and then rise up to make a country or just a town more livable so they run away to live like rats but to live. It’s just so upsetting. It’s upsetting how people lose their cities and their abilities to live but still I believe in fighting. A fight to block out this fucked up world. To build a better one even among and within ourselves. Cause sadly or not, not everyone could live in that one city and this is why I hated Children of Men. It simply sold the idea that there are only like four cities in the whole world worth to live in.   
For a reason we all want to be elsewhere. Henry Miller’s Air-Conditioned Nightmare starts with a conversation between him and a Hungarian friend of his. That friend is happy now cause he always wanted to live in New York and now he does while Miller wonders away to Budapest. Budapest was then governed by some semi fascist regent and we were in a flow that led right into Second World War. Still he wanted to be here. We envy each other’s places. While being in the US people who toured Western Europe were complaining how there punks criticize Americans because they think punk is so easy for them yanks. While in some western countries squatters get extra money if they own dogs. People have to face community service if they smash a brick into a cop’s face while in San Francisco you got shot if you don’t have a bus ticket and you run away from cops.
What I envy in people is the extra energy. The power and will to carry on. It’s in abroad but it’s in every town. Those crazy people, who sit down, anchor them to somewhere and just do their things. Maybe they are legends, maybe they are nameless. But still they are cornerstones of the scene. Even if you are not one of them you are a part of their work too if you just help them with your existence. This magazine could be put out cause you have bought it. A show is just some crazy dude who wrote an e-mail to a band to perform in a room without the audience. A band is just some people making noise at a room without listeners. We are all part of it and we all need each other. We are in this together. And we are everywhere. For some reason from a line, people are different, they speak different, act different, live different but still there is something that makes us stick together instantly even if we were raised different and somewhere else. I love this. I love that I’m a part of this magazine from the other end of the world from a shady room. But I love it more that I can always write about my friends, about what is happening with us and I love that you whoever you are can maybe understand this all. Cause even english is not being my first language maybe my thoughts could go through these lines.
So this all was not against moving. Mobilization is one of the best things ever. Whoever decides to leave their town for a better life and start it all over again are the strongest people. But sometimes you have to look from what you run and where you run to. While I could be better elsewhere I lie myself into believing I’m a do-er. Thus I sit on my ass and try to do things. Cause after all maybe Krasznahorkai was right when he got asked if he feels better in Berlin. He replied: No. But it’s not Berlins fault. He is hungarian and he is destined to not feel good anywhere. 

#358

I have started writing this column on the 30^th of December at 1 am. Guess I will finish this a week after the deadline deep in January. Whatever. My birthday is coming up. It’s on the 3^rd of January. I will turn 26 which means it’s 4 more years till punk death = 30 (it means you will come to a point when you realize you have been punk through half of your life even if you’ve joined in the last minute which is the age 16 and you have to decide to either carry on and disappear with honor). January 3^rd. Same exact day Nietzsche went crazy after he saw a person beat a horse into almost death. On that date Hitler’s father died which is kinda funny if I think about it, my dad shares a birthday with Hitler’s death day. Both of us look like we are jews while we are not. Also my first band (who were supposed to play it’s first show on my 16^th birthday but got delayed to one week further) broke up on my father’s birthday and on hitler’s death day. It’s just my sentimental mind that makes such a big deal out of dates not that I have the agenda to point out that there is some cosmic thing about me and nazi leaders. I still am just some regular dude who maybe thinks too much about the whole universe.

I have a roommate but our flat is just one room. I ordered him to set up a surprise party for me otherwise I will throw him out to the streets. Cause for sure I’m just like everybody else I want surprise parties every year and also survive my funeral and see how people have realized since I’m gone they kinda loved me. I only had one birthday party and maybe I had it cause I share the same birthday with one of my best friends. So he had a birthday party and I was invited as well and I got a cake too. I almost had an amazing birthday once.
I was a freshman in high school and just got into punk in the sense of that I have started to go to shows in every 3 months and also posting on local message boards controversial bullshit to have beefs. There was a festival on my birthday with all the best local bands who I loved then. Two of them were raised me in a way. And we were supposed to go there with all my norm friends and a girl from my class who looked beautiful, listened to NOFX and she was kinda sweet to me (she ended up being a junkie).

Everyone quit on me early afternoon. So from the best possible night of my then so far life by a second it turned into the worst shit ever. I locked myself into my room and was just blasting one of the bands’ - that played that night - cd on full volume and sang along to the lines like “if they say life is a crime then I’m innocent cause I wasn’t happy not even for a day”. While I cried. My mother freaked out because she is just a person who cares so she asked my brother to sacrifice his Saturday night and be my entourage or more like my driver and security guard for that show. She said I can’t be depressed on my birthday. But she also thinks no one should be depressed at any time, even if she always tells me she is depressed – luckily she isn’t really. My brother dug out some of his most worn out cloths as camouflage and we went for the show. He got bored quick so we only watched two and a half bands and the half band was the band that changed my life and also it shared members with my then future band and the friend with whom we share the same birthday. Also the band I was blasting in the solitude of my temporary teenage tragedy I shared membership in two bands with one of the members and soon i will help him out on bass for his solo D-beat project band.

That night was kinda magical. The place was in a total blown out part of the city. Many scary people: Strung out bums, aggressive skinheads, random low life people. My brother stayed in the back and I lost myself in the crowd. The whole event was like finally I stepped into a place where I have belonged. It was full of excitement and addictive danger. I saw many things that night that was new but I understood them. It was the same frustration I had, the same need to be somewhere where you feel finally at home. When you feel like finally you are close to something important. Where you can disappear to be found. It was something I could describe but it wouldn’t make any sense to people who wasn’t there even if they would understand my words.

A decade later after a Neon Piss show here in our town we were sitting outside the venue drinking beer and smiling. Discussing with friends that if we have gone to work tomorrow what would have we said. That we went to a show. But it was at a rehearsal room at an industrial site. Where only 40 people came but the whole room was dripping in sweat and happiness and spilled out beers thus it felt like the whole world is in that room. The crowd was half naked even some girls, that we were hugging each other and due to this at some point everybody lost track of where their bodies end and other people’s start. It was just beautiful. While it was the same thing, the same thing that is still fresh. The same thing that I have finally found that night 11 years ago.

In the unstoppable force of the crowd when my favorite local band played and it was just loud and beautiful and so true. The singer who’s now my friend was singing so loud it woke me up for days. We left at half of their set and I remember sitting into my brother’s car I felt like I’m in a bubble and this will protect me. That bubble has expanded and now it’s full with friends, and memories, and achievements. Like last night on my birthday where I got a fanzine with many of my friends saying amazingly sweet things about me, about how they see me and about how we are in each other’s lives. And fuck I think I’m kinda bipolar cause it is changing in me always that either I feel amazing for no reason or terribly shitty for no reason. But maybe they are right and everything is possible and we will make it.

It’s just weird. I hate education but love learning and thinking so nowadays sometimes I read philosophy mostly on Wikipedia and then think for myself. Probably this made me realize things or worse and due to I’m stupid as fuck I project these badly understood ideas on my life. Anyway I spent this afternoon with hanging with my friends, ate a lot, made out with an amazing girl then met for a birthday dinner with my ex girlfriend to eat ramen and soup dumplings, strolled with her a little bit, had couple laughs, said our good byes then I started listening to Neu!, toke a bus ride and started reading my birthday gift which was the fanzine. And started crying on the bus. Came home finished the rest. Not all my friends wrote into this. And it was weird who were some of the people who did but instead of feeling that I lack some people here I just started recalling all the amazing things that have happened to us, with us and how I love some people and how much they did for me. And fuck one of my all time favorite band Cloak / Dagger just made a picture for me with all of them greeting me with pizza and moonshine. This made me think on something else as well.

One of the most influential people from the Bay Area scene and maybe from all over the world has just passed away in the recent past. I have never met Sarah Kirsch although one of my best friends played with her in many bands and she was his best friend. When I read the news I did not know what to do. I just felt that there’s a friend at the other end of the world and he is in a big loss and I just can’t help him now. I can’t be there for him cause when someone dies it’s the people who are still alive and in grieving matters. It was amazing in a way how many people reacted with telling their appreciation on how much Sarah did for them, for her city for her community for our community that is international punk. And it was Robert from MRR and Terminal Escape was who said these sort of things should be said to each other while we are alive. So I wrote a letter to my friend and I told him how much I miss him, how much he did to me and how much I’m sad for his loss. And what else could and should we do to make life better for the living? For us. Mostly for ourselves because that’s the person we have to stay with for the most. And If you get appreciated just hang on for that. Keep it true even after you have received someone’s love. Just try cause the good things should start at one point.

Year End Top 10 from #358

lists are stupid but being a fan is the coolest thing.

12’’

Sickoids – Self Titled (Residue records)

Talking about punk perfection. Sickoids were the first band that made me want to do a list this year, they are that good it has to be said as many times as it’s possible. Cause they rise above almost all the other records from this year. This record has everything that’s good in punk it’s raw, desperate, melodic, angry, unstoppable, filthy, smart, ugly, young. And while it’s everything you have already loved they are using the old tools to create a new shape. To stay just what we all like: total sonic destruction that hears like love songs written by kids whose hobby is burning cop cars.

Rat Columns – Sceptre Hole (Smartguy records)

Winter is cool. No one’s out on the streets, lights are on due to the early darkness, mist clouds everywhere and all the time, nice cloths. Rat Columns is the soundtrack for me for these amazing days but will be for the upcoming seasons as well. And I feel like it’s a soundtrack for a documentary about my life. About our lives, it has so many different sounds and emotions it’s like this all. It’s like music that has to be made cause it’s in everybody who is a beautiful loser. This is what I’m listening to when I gaze in my everyday daze. Amazing stuff.

Merchandise – Children of Desire (Katorga Works)

I reached a point with listening to this record that made me put them into the guilty pleasure category cause it was embarrassing how much I played their record. I played this when friends came over, when I went on wet summer nights to get drunk at islands, when I went to dates, when I came home after failed dates. When we were just hanging out, eating spaghettis after midnight, all the fucking time. Even at work where people started digging it. This is just beautiful and ugly, a whole universe under a blanket, where people who maybe pushed down in and by life go into their strange rooms and they create something among their four walls that is bigger than life. New Order plays Beat Happening songs which are as serious as Angels of Lights with a Neu! sound. Eat drugs and dance love.

Creem – Self Titled (Deranged records)

I remember when glue sniffing punks were opening for bands like Terror. When i was 16 i thought Bridge 9 is the best label ever. Then there was a growing ditch between punk and hardcore but at one point in the recent past bands started to appear who could grab both the punk and the hardcore scenes’ attention. I mean those who are way deep in their own subgenres. Creem is a perfect example for this cause they are fucking amazing. Skinheads with sneakers, edge people in smoke stink shirts. They are disgusting in a way Life’s Blood or Negative Approach were, mixing that amazing blocked rage clockwork orange violence of the Blitz sound with filthy new york trash era hardcore. This band proved me that room moshing could be fun.

Baader Brains – New Era Hope Colony (Empyre Records, Clean Plate Records, Ebullition Records)

Sometimes it bums me out how some bands who actually sound pretty good have nothing to say. And sometimes I get bummed out cause I’m dumb to understand everything Baader Brains is saying. This band is amazing cause you could feel and hear and read that these people put their time and creativity and message and power into these songs and expanded them to their fullest capabilities. And the result is some unique record that is everything that is good in punk and the overall message is everything that’s good in being an intelligent mammal. And there’s a United Mutation cover!!!

Criminal Code - Cold Thought (Inimical records)

Criminal Code had a word about them before their sounds have reached me. Most of the times this triggers high hopes in me and the higher you go the harder you could fall. I put this record on for the first time and it was just beyond my imagination. Bands like Criminal Code: i can only call them punk cause they are bringing the essential of the genre as much as there is only this single word to describe them the best. They sound modern but timeless modern, they are powerful but melodic, raw but smart. The wall of sound guitars with their everyday life gloom. There’s tension in every of their songs which is constantly rising, it’s like brilliant punk through an overdrive. Every sound is killer on this one. This was probably the best guitar centric record this year. 

Neon Piss – self titled (deranged)

This record had to grow on me. I loved their demo and their live performances and while the record is almost the same it sounded so monumental in their final studio form that it was too much to digest in the first couple listens. They not only put their melodies, desperation and anger into these songs but the overall record is just full with the well thought construction of punk awesomeness. It just makes you find friends and while you skate around a smashed cop station’s parking lot you could sing along to these amazing anthems of the strange youth.

Puffy Areolas - 1982: Dishonorable Discharge (Hozac records)

Ordinary thing about smoking weed regularly is even when you are sober you imagine how better things were if you were stoned. Ordinary thing about Puffy Areolas is they make you feel you are stoned and it’s 5 am but you still just want to fuck your brain up with more materials. This sounds like if some crazy scientist drugged Void and made them into a creepy psychedelic hardcore jam band. Perfect background music for garden parties where you smoke your night in burning plastic among bile puking punks.

D-Clone - Creation And Destroy (540 records)

They said no emotions or memories in this list but I first heard this record at a filthy basement when two noise-not-music head friends were blasting it with making silly faces and satanic hand signs. Music like this has always depressed me in a way but then I have realized it’s more than fun. This record is amazing. It’s so distorted and loud and noisy and fast beyond being able to keep up with them it turns into something grotesquely beautiful that’s like funny or happy while it’s not. It’s the evil baby their parents love but everybody else hates. This is music what your grandma thinks you are listening to when you tell her about punk. Full blown noise terror which makes you spill your beer on leather jackets. I could say punk and hardcore but seriously this sonic madness is in another universe.

Uv Race – Racism (In the Red recordings)

For some reason I always just end up listening to Uv Race and their new record is maybe their best to date. I like it when music sounds like it would be fun to hang with the people who are making it. This record is just fun cause post punk supposed to be fun. Whatever, this is the only time that racism were cool in history.

7’’

Coffin Pricks – Group Home Haircut (Stationary (Heart) Recordings)
Shaved Women – Static (Pass Judgement Records)
Dark Times – Girl Hate (Fysisk Format)
Lower – Walk On Heads (Escho)
Shoppers / Panzram – Split (Feeble Minds Records)
Homostupids – New York Jammin’ (hozac records)
White Lung – Self Titled (sabotage records)

Tapes

Piss Crystals – This is crazy. Hailing from Budapest, Hungary Piss Crystals is mixing kraut rock, noise, hardcore punk and black Sabbath-ish jams. And they end up sounding like Dinosaur Jr playing deep wound songs. Soooo good.

Replica – this band is a total fucking rager and there was no question they were the band of 2012. Angry people creating amazing noise. My vocabulary is not enough for them so I rather just bang my head to their totally awesome sounds.

Spiritual Warriors – now this is what makes me happy. Some stoned hippies blasting distorted love hardcore. How the fuck did it happen that the live recording on their tape is way better than the studio one? Anyway, this is the music that I like.

Caged Animal – I was at a hardcore show where the singer said “the next jam is a stomper”. No idea about what that is but listening to this demo makes me wanna kick myself in the head with a boot it’s that good. Delete me from facebook if you disagree.

Index – Reverbed fun punk perfection for dreamy cool bedroom dance parties. The sounds are fitting shitty tattoos, awesome haircuts and midnight parking lot skate jams. This band is just so effortlessly cool listening to them will make you cool as well. In the punk way.

Proxy – if you like drinking beer, hanging with friends, wearing nice cloths and yelling oi too much this will be your band. Nah, they are way better with melodies and overall music that it’s like oi music for everyone. Anyway This is a crazy good demo even for closet skinheads like myself.

#357

December is coming and no one has any plans for the new year’s eve so just keep reiterating their hatred towards celebrating the end of another 12 months. They are all going to hug each other with puke breath at the end. A year ago on the 30th I got an e-mail. I got asked if I want to participate in telling my version of everyday life as a punk. All I did before was that I made a zine in English and I wrote a scene report. And I have a friend in the inner circle who, I guess, kept his back for me.
Years are time intervals and time is an opportunity for things to happen. Was this a good year or not? It was just a year. There are no simply good or bad things except punk is good and jazz is bad. Thus punk was good this year. It was for me. All I think about writing this for almost a year is I always wanted to participate from the first time since I have read this fanzine. And while the actual process of writing my columns does not give me more pleasure than it did when I was doing it for my own zines or blogs last month’s letter section with Mariam articulating that how we are punx and how we have our secret world made me almost broke down to tears of joy that in a way I’m doing something together with this kick ass girl. As we all do who understood her words.

The words are always the same. We say young, true, not, giving, fucks and so it goes. But if the secret is not a real secret for you, you could spot “real” even among ordinary things too. So whoever and wherever you are if you are doing it on the way you think is the best you will be spotted as well. Or not and live a terrible life and commit suicide as Kafka did.

I have no great thoughts or beef this time so I will mostly talk about music and regular punk enthusiasm.

We had Street Eaters over in our flat, town, rehearsal room for a last minute show and some early afternoon punk lunch with pasta and bottled tomato sauce and late night drunk conversations after their show. It started lovely. I was having a late night “drunk on his part, stoned on mine” chat with my friend, whose farm they were spending a day off and he seemed to be so high on meeting and sharing experiences with these two lovely individuals that around 3 am he suggested me to organize a little show for them if they agree in the morning to visit our town after having their breakfast. And they did and it was great and they stole everyone’s heart with their punk love towards everything and each other. So much harmony. Actually more in living their lives and dealing with the world than in their music which is already filled with great grooves and beats. So go figure how they are as individuals when the band is actually a bass-and- duo. I doubt that many people’s lives would be changed by well put phrases about happiness that may be true. In fact, those phrases are never true but simple and dull enough so you can project them onto your life to get you motivated. But when you see this in practice as other people really live their everyday lives by them, even on tour, which is not the most typical scenario in one’s life...that is so much different and inspiring. Their presence was unique. And it wasn’t stupid and dull like those phrases. It was more and in the same time it was just so simple. I don’t say that no one is happy but them as they also might have problems. It was just simply good to see lovely people among us. Maybe for a roomful of kids who have nothing else to do and are no late from anywhere on a morning following a Thursday night it could mean something.

Now to music and listening to records. Isn’t that boring that I put music always into the second part? At least this time there is no shady explanation why I was listening to bands and some pathetic bridge between the message and the entertainment. It is weird because while being important for life, music itself has so little meaning. There are books and movies that are analyzed and considered as materials of serious message, while music is just being reduced to entertainment as primitive indulgence since people realized that pieces of classical composers are not that good to listen to all the time. When people are analyzing music it’s more of a tale of the industry and the people behind music not the tale of the music itself. And tales of us as listeners. There are very few descriptions of music in terms of its the meaning. Maybe it’s too basic and ancient that we don't need to do all the thinking we normally do when we try to understand everything else. Even if we want to understand music. I don’t. I find joy in music. Music amazes me. I bet that’s why I like music mostly that’s either brutal or beautiful. This year was a blast in the sense of the releases of punk music and I have some absolute favorites meaning I let my enthusiasm decide what are the best records for me this year and I don't have to push my enthusiasm to pick some albums to create a list that represents my adoration of music. The good thing about punk is if it’s good it won’t get worn out by time and trends. I was cheated into liking ska music by the blindness of being young. As I see now, I won’t indulge myself in any kind of nostalgia and find myself banging my head to OPERATION IVY anytime soon. However, the bands I’m still listening to are covering a wide range in time and scenes and talking about them could still be fresh cause these bands are still fresh. Let’s start with something obvious: Christ Thompson is some angel voiced punk perfection. All of his bands are pure gold and it could be attributed to his amazing voice in great part. My favorite is FURY. Not because you almost can’t go wrong with less. It might be easier to seal your perfection into one 7’’ to last forever, Fury is a band I wish would have done more. This  is amazing “right-before-post-hardcore-hardcore” that hints into the future of sounds of a genre that draws it’s borders clearly. Fury is just so great in mixing viciously cool rage with groovy hardcore. The DC sound dominates on this ep while there is high speed rage that’s been held in chains by some epic, “slapping your tights on the bus as heavy as you can” guitar parts. Space love, space guitars, space hardcore. It’s so perfect like rocket science. Whole things feel like it’s a genius master plan done by some extraordinary juxtaposition of people. Like bandits of music committing the perfect crime. While it resigns from rolling with everyday bullshit and rises above us poor fucks it’s also very detailed and focuses all the anger they had into all those brief one and half minutes. The ep is so short it could fit into you and you always could reach for it. To be your ultimate weapon to throw it into the face of desolation. While it’s futuristic in a way it also stays true to the aesthetics of pure rage from the impatient youth. This is kinda how I hear Thompson’s voice. It may sound squeaky, almost childlike, but it is more like as if it would suffer from GHD as it has full potential for knowledge. One of the best things in music ever. One of the other best things, but this time in New York hardcore, is CITIZENS ARREST. One of the few bands that still can release good records. It seems like that there is a fountain of oppressed rage that never goes out. Usually I look for some relief if I encounter something this dark and massive in the way of being a complex house of suffering but the relief in citizens arrest is that there’s no relief at all. Their sound has filth, but not what they put into, but what they discovered around themselves in other humans. It’s just so honest and those fidgety guitars are rhyming perfectly with desolation. Their songs exist in a lifeless, brutally sterile landscape where all these frustrating noises while punching my brain they also cuddling with it with their fucked up beauty. Horrible things are carrying some beauty that’s what I have realized at a punk fest once where I was standing with a plastic bag full of beer and watching some Brazilian band shocking everybody. It’s easy to continue this analogy of weird brutality with ZOUO, the music I listen to nowadays. This Japanese band amazed me the very first time I heard them. The concept is beyond crazy, like they have translated whatever bizarre things I was thinking about japan in my own stereotypical way and that’s also what’s good about them. The menace sonic awkwardness goes along a solid backbone, meaning what they are doing is freaky good because it is freaky strange and it still feels like that it just has to exist. Just because some people thought why not to play ultra brutal hardcore restrained on mid tempo. That’s why it is good. Like if some people have read about united mutation and strange guitar centric apocalypse punk and created it their own way from their own imagination. It brings the warmness of fantasy through creativity into the rigid reality of existence. It’s just ugly psychedelic hardcore like a dough stretched out and lengthened, still can’t fail my attention even if I’m against punk over 2 minutes. The rule is that there is no control and no boundaries. That’s why everything they have thought to do is possible to be done. So just think about what’s life. We desire things and we struggle to meet them. If we can’t, we have to cope with grieving and this makes us different or better people. Form our identity. And if we can reach our highest desire which, according to the maslow pyramid, is self expression in it’s fullest we reach the absolute. And because punk is a platform where one's desire can be met, punk might be the absolute. If I’m listening to Zouo I can believe this.

The other aspect in music I’m listening to nowadays is presented by bands who are more like on the side of making life more bearable than focusing on why should we be angry. So there are bands that blow this bubble that it’s big enough for us to find some solace. Like GUN OUTFIT. First time I heard this band they sounded like I have already heard them. It sounded familiar. And not like I have heard it for the millionth time but finally the sounds in my head had a body. This needed to be done because it was missed and as it is so obvious it just makes it more close to nature, which is something truly/deeply for me in gun outfit’s music. The sounds are slacking, guitars slowly waking up from a sonic hangover with a stoned glaze. It’s music beyond music that resonates with the sub- and unconscious. Music to wonder about smoking weed and wasting whole afternoons with sitting in a garden swinging your legs half drunk. Their childish but brilliant melodies grab me just as their down to earth while dreamy lyrics. It’s dreamy enough that I wish it would be reality. One of the best current bands. One of my current favorite old bands as a rediscovery from underground noise’s eternal archive is THE CLEAN. I’ve knew about this band but I came close to actually nerd out and through them just in the last few months. Total rain music, where the drops hitting my windowsill are going hand in hand with the imaginary dance party they create and I have in my mind in my room alone. Wandering around sounds that are collecting the whole thing that is playing on guitars. So powerful while dreamy and familiar. It’s a soundtrack for everyone in every moment thus it makes life more bearable. Their sound is so wide you imagine landscapes to their music and whether there and people like a whole new universe or just a scene like a dream that you are carrying around in your pocket on your listening device. Wall of goodness that’s what it is. Oh shit I’m running out of space so I will quickly say that NEU! is fucking amazing space punk forever.