ruined smile records

DIY label based in Brisbane, Australia via the UK

[toofattoskatezine]

Masada - Self Titled

Here’s another release put out by our good friend Ruined Smile Records!  German four-piece Masada probably couldn’t have put together a more brilliant debut record. It blends the extreme abrasiveness of grindcore, verges on powerviolence in some sections, adds to some perfectly morose vocal works, and a slightly injection of haunting electronics for something that’s completely blown me out of the water.  Despite a fair majority of these tracks not passing much over the minute thirty mark, this record is monstrous. To preface this, you will be subjected to a pure aural assault, punctuated by moments of tortured bliss, and be lead on a sonic path that changes timbres so often, you’ll be left dizzied, disoriented and craving another go at this. An indicative sign tell of what you should be prepared for is the fuzzed out guitar, swarming feedback over menacing, tribal tom beats signify the start of this release that this self title debut from German group Masada is going to be something to remember. Within the first minute of opener “Uneindeu”, you’re thrown from spastic chaos into piercing clean chord, whiplashing between both spectrums.Each individual track holds their own intrinsic elements that’ll sear themselves into your ears, the summation of which is an absolutely stellar record.“Defeat” has some of the most painfully beautiful clean singing I’ve heard in a long time. It’s with that anguished strain that holds reminiscence of The Mountain Goats. In conjunction with the melodic guitars, these vocals will lull you into a false sense of calm before pushing you straight into the dark, abrasiveness. A perfect example of this abrasiveness is the noise burst of “Sandkaestan”. Being the shortest track on here, edging out its predecessor, “Schwaerzeter Punkt”, by a mere five seconds, it presents all the elements used poignantly on this release. Beginning with a smothering of all the instruments, seguing into a heavily warped bass riffs, subsiding into desperately howled vocals and then finishing with a stunning crescendo. Although analogue instruments, performed at peak intensities, dominate this LP and switching between sections with head snapping speed, Masada proves they’re not formulaic with “T-S”. Glitching, fluttering and slightly nauseating electronics are complied onto of each other, recreating the tension and urgency but in a more gradual and haunting method. This flows perfectly into the introduction of “Nach Aukha”, with the electronics linger and blending seamlessly into the melancholy instrumental. It’s records like these that I’m so fucking happy to be able to do what I do. Even more stoked that people like Ruined Smile Records are putting this stuff out. To add on top of that again, I’m in awe of bands like Masada for coming through with a completely blistering collection of gems that simultaneously pushing music forward through creating such memorable and beautiful pieces of controlled chaos while dragging listeners through this twisted, cacophonous path they’ve laid out. Is it too early to call this the album of the year

~ Matt

If you’ve made it the end of this review and still haven’t check out this record, what the fuck, man? Get on this shit! https://ruinedsmilerecords.bandcamp.com/album/masada

[ruinedsmilerecords]

Here's a lovely review of the Masada LP from the good folk at @toofattoskatezine

[toofattoskatezine]

Moral Straightjacket - Earth Is Not Good Enough For Me

Our friends at Ruined Smile have put us onto another gem of a record, this time from California band Moral Straightjacket and their atmospheric, and engaging LP “Earth Is Not Good Enough For Me”. it’s the bands first full length release and it’s a stunning collection of songs.

Much like Self Defense Family, whom they’ve been likened to, Moral Straightjacket are a band, in particularly on this record, where you can have repeat listens to this beautifully layered compositions and each time, you’ll pick up on small nuances that contribute to the overall ethereal sonic landscape. There’s a lingering, haunting beauty intertwined with the very spacious instrumentals and I think a fair majority of that is brought forward by the slightly warped vocals.

If you like post punk with intrinsic poetic and artistic charm, give this a listen.

https://ruinedsmilerecords.bandcamp.com/album/earth-is-not-good-enough-for-me

~Matt

[ruinedsmilerecords]

Nice piece about the latest Moral Straightjacket release.

[toofattoskatezine]

Human Hands / The Blue Period - 12″ Split - Review

Human Hand / The Blue Period 12” Split

In the interest of full disclosure, this is the first time I’ve ever reviewed a split release so I have no idea how PROPERLY review this style of release. So I’m going to review each side individually and then see if, though the are different artists, whether it comes together in a coherent and succinct release.Harry put me onto The Blue Period somewhere in the last two months so checking out more of their discography made me pretty keen coming in to listening to this split. The dudes from Ruined Smile put us onto this and, boy oh boy, are we glad they did.This idea of an “emo revival” or really anything that is thrown under this revivalists banner comes across as incredibly reductive. Different age brackets grew up in different era, and all those individual eras have different genres that they hold dearest. When people in this age bracket begin to write music, these influences are then brought back into the musical forefront. To simply label this as a “revival” takes away from the people who are currently making this kind of music and devalues it as well.As an opening remark though, I will say that this entire recording is done in a style that I adore to death. It’s live, it’s really quite raw but it also sounds like something both groups are incredibly proud of. They’ve maintained a solid balance of necessary rawness without sacrificing any production quality.

Human Hands side Human Hands kick off this 12” in stellar fashion with the swelling, chord driven Hiding Place. The production on this tracks offers a very interesting foil between the very open and live instrumentation as opposed to the vocals coming from behind a gag, in a basement below the band themselves. It’s something that Loma Prieta did well on their last record and something that Steve Albini employed a lot of during his work with The Lizard Wizard. With the instrumentation remaining more joyous and cathartic than the strained and angst tinged vocals, the UK group have started given this split a perfect introduction to how this runs. The higher pitched vocals coming through interjects some counterpoints to the lead vocals hurried delivery. There is a heavy emphasis on melodic interplay between the instruments themselves rather than seeing the importance of the vocal lines by the time Petrichor enters this split’s fray. Vocals are pushed even further down into this basement space the mix has created. Above this subterranean vocal both, we’re gifted with a much more melancholy piece. The drums have slowed down, emphasising each trudging beat forwards. Guitars, however beautiful they may be, now seem introspective and inwards. Much like House of Giants did on their recent Ep, Human Hands have crafted songs that will be remembered more for their lead guitar lines, which people will be singing in their heads, as opposed to humming along to the vocals. This motif carries over perfectly into the final two songs. Rust follows a spoken word style delivery while guitars trade sullen harmonies over each other digresses into the closer track Blank Air. Whilst being the longest track on the Human Hands side and shading in just behind the close of The Blue Period’s side, Blank Air allows the band to operate between consecutive crescendos, indulging in the listen a tension that broods below the surface, and sit patiently, and ironically, quite comfortably below the surface. It provides Human Hands with enough space to position each suspense inducing pluck, pitching that against the vocals and allowing the rhythm section to lull the listener into hypnotic state while being taken by the music. There is a definite downside to this track but it’s really not a bad one, in all honesty. With this track in particular, the music follows its own narrative. It’s intrinsic with personal flow, movement and an overall progression towards the final note. It’s a wonderful journey whilst you’re on it but once this has come to an end, you’re wanting to repeat and follow it all over again.Although these four songs do progressively become darker as you venture down the track listening, they come across as carefully assembled; all with referential points. This bring the half together as a cohesive, and moving set of songs.

The Blue Period side As I mentioned earlier, having some heard of The Blue Period’s other work, I was really keen to see how this new split sounds and I’m nothing short of in love. It also provides an interesting juxtaposition against Human Hands’ side of this split. The first track Spooky Action at a Distance does have some very low level noise, brimming in the barely auditory range however, this doesn’t detract from the endearing and straight-from-the-bottle-maple-syrup sweetness that the harmonised vocals provide. It is something on this record that I simply can’t move on from or get enough of. The male and female vocals will oft-sing opposing lines simultaneously and rather than becoming cacophonous word soup, the soundscape painted by the very warm, intimate yet open and bordering ethereal, has gifted them with enough of a sonic plane to be able to pull this technique off quite well. I’m sure this band would be sick to death of having a Pity Sex reference drawn but this bombastic nature of occasional instrumental bursts seem far more like H A N N A H B A N D than the Run For Cover signees. To step even further away from that comparison, there’s an obvious lack of any guitar distortion or phaser on the vocals. The Blue Period can confidently showcase their ability to write intricately layered songs that utilise the dual vocal strengths as well as the progressive harmonies that breathe life into their tracks. With all but one track running over the four and a half minutes mark, these songs could very well exhaust all the quaint indie charm possessed inside each of these darling songs but through the clever use of strings in songs like History Notes and The Glitch, The Blue Period can build and layer these musical foundations, anchor them in the song structure and then expand out into this grand venture into gorgeous melancholy.

[virginiasook-blog]

Why cassette tapes? Virginia Sook/Lake Michigan split

Late last year, independent label Ruined Smile Records facilitated a cross-continental split between Virginia Sook and London based Lake Michigan. All parties involved decided we wanted to release the split onto cassette tape. The bands put two songs on each side, creating an intimate and offbeat story of two cities. I thought I’d take this opportunity to waff on about how much I love tapes, as well as speak with Matt of Ruined Smile Records about the process of bringing the tapes to life.  

A lot of music purists can’t get down with the recent popularity of tapes. But just like there are endless ways to make music, there are also countless ways to listen to it – each as uniquely personal, rich and evocative as the next. A lot of cassette enthusiasts see tapes as counter cultural to the instantaneous and flawless ease of modern music listening methods, and I can’t help but feel charmed by these ideas of nostalgic regression. When I put on a tape I can almost feel the time-and-space-weathered sound being squeezed out of the player. I love to see the reel dutifully spin in the little cassette, to know the music that was thoughtfully crafted is bound in that little plastic strip as it winds away like an eternally retreating snail. And when the journey is over and the tape is ejected, I love that its guarded, rectangular shape gives nothing away. There are only minor hints as to what stories are contained beneath the plastic sheath. Maybe there’s a bit of art, the bands name in a playful font, or a handwritten scrawl – but for the most part the only way to unravel the code contained is to dust off your tape player, pop her in and press play.

I love the way tapes make music tactile again; you can feel the rims and imprints. You can hold the comforting weight and wonder about the process it took to get the sounds on there. There’s no denying that processes are in place, that the music isn’t simply emerging formless and perfect from another world. There’s been a journey of nuts, bolts, printers, microphones, late nights, calloused fingers and inflamed throats to get it there. The tape holds secrets but gives just enough away so that the holder can mull on how it’s come to be what it is. And listening to the tape becomes a process in itself – the experience becomes ritualized in the getting out and dusting off of the player, inserting the tape, listening to it play all the way through (punctuated by the familiar click that symbols the half-way mark) only to have the tape spit back out once the journey is over.

           Matt of Ruined Smile (the label, hands and brains behind the Virginia Sook/Lake Michigan split) had a thing or two more to say about the process of breathing life into our release.  

           ‘For me, tapes are a great way of documenting music and are an opportunity to make something beautiful from a simple, old fashioned format.

For the Virginia Sook and Lake Michigan split tapes, I thought that this was a lovely match musically and a way of bringing together music from my hometown and the one in which I currently live. A fair few people in different places around the world had a hand in it too. As well as the music from Virginia Sook in Brisbane and Lake Michigan in London via York in England, we had photos taken by a friend of Lake Michigan’s while travelling in Japan, my friend Evan in London putting together the artwork for the covers, and then Lisa and I in Brisbane making the inserts using words and lyrics from both Virginia Sook and Lake Michigan, as well as the aforementioned photos from Japan and an old railway magazine from 1933 that my Dad in England gave to me a while back. I also hand-dubbed the tapes at home and ink-stamped the tape labels by hand. You can add to that the fact that Wolf Town DIY in Wolverhampton, England, also released their own version of the tape so there was a quite a bit happening all over the place on this one. I think it turned out to be a lovely release.’

You can purchase a ‘Virginia Sook/Lake Michigan’ split tape at our shows or through Ruined Smile Records:

https://ruinedsmilerecords.bandcamp.com/album/split

[ruinedsmilerecords]

First track from Arkless is up on the bandcamp page now. Will be releasing this in Australia in July or August.

[ruinedsmilerecords]

Recently did a download sampler of tracks from most of the releases on the label since it started in July 2014.

[patricksmusicblog]

Virgina Sook & Lake Michigan-Split(EP Review)

     Virgina Sook is a folk band out of Brisbane, Australia and Lake Michigan is a folk artist from  London, England. They’re both under Ruined Smile Records a England based DIY record label and they’ve come together on this pretty cohesive split EP.

    The EP starts with two tracks from Virgina Sook. The music is acoustic across the board however Virgina Sook bring a fuller sound to the table with some glockenspiel, some organ sounds as well.  Of course the main focus though is Lindsay Roser’s(Vocals, Harp, Glockendpiel)  lyrics and coming from a mostly weary sounding vocal. The first track, Love Everyone is sort of about what sounds like dealing with an addiction but overcoming it, learning to not only love ones self but also others as well. God and Science is a particularly interesting song about seeing the world around you and sort of being in awe of it, so in awe it wouldn’t surprise you that God made it.

    The final two tracks are by Lake Michigan which is the alias of Christopher Marks. His tracks are more stripped back. Just him and his guitar. He has a deep vocal and a sort of layman’s delivery that sounds pretty earnest. His guitar playing is definitely solid as he sings about being alone on autumn nights. Sunspots sounds like a track about wasting days getting over a past love.

  These tracks are made for leisurely brisk fall dusk time days. Just as chill and listen to some heartfelt poetry over some acoustics. It’s fitting they’re on Ruined Smile  Records cause these songs all sound morose. Still both artist make songs that are pretty solid.  This split EP is most definitely worth a listen particularly if you’re into folk music, with a slow tempo and nice acoustic guitar playing.

Listen Here————>https://ruinedsmilerecords.bandcamp.com/album/split

Rating:7.5/10

By: Patrick Griffin II

[ruinedsmilerecords]

Lovely review of the virginiasook and Lake Michigan split here.

[ruinedsmilerecords]

Those virginiasook and Lake Michigan tapes look like this.

[ruinedsmilerecords]

This one is ready now. Two tracks each by virginiasook from Brisbane and @lakemichigan from the UK. Also released in the UK any day now by wolftowndiy.

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

New Audio: London Punk Trio Feature's "Wisdom Teeth" and "Tourism Fiction"

Originally starting as a duo comprised of Liv Willars (guitar) and Jen Calleja (drums), best known as a member of Sauna Youth and Monotony, London-based band Feature started receiving attention nationally for a drone pop/power punk/riot grrrl sound. Recently, Heather Perkins (bass), known as a member of Slowcoaches joined the band, turning the duo into a trio.

The newly formed trio are quickly…

View On WordPress

[outofsightzine]

Exclusive Stream: Split Cassette from Virginia Sook and Lake Michigan

Brisbane’s Virginia Sook and London’s Lake Michigan have paired up for a new split cassette which is coming out through Ruined Smile Records and Wolf Town DIY at the end of the month, and Out of Sight Zine is very happy to be giving you the first opportunity to hear it ahead of the physical release! You can stream the entire split below as well as read a brief interview with both artists…

Keep reading

[ruinedsmilerecords]

The next ruined smile release will be this split between Virginia Sook and Lake Michigan - streaming now alongside an interview at Out of Sight zine.

[ruinedsmilerecords]

Those Duct Hearts records look like this.

[ruinedsmilerecords]

This is a new release on ruined smile this week. Co-released with a number of other labels all around the world.

[lakexmichigan-deactivated201507]

Hello hello Just so you know (if you want to know) some things I will be doing in the near/nearish future

Really really great split tape with someone on the other side of the world (in a couple of months-ish probably)

Full length, probably also on tape (+ some cute handmade CDs) sometime in Summer/Autumn

Playing a festival in a forest in Sweden (if everything works out)

Playing in Berlin (also if everything works out)

Hopefully playing loads of other places (help)

WOLF TOWN DIY have my 7" for sale here:http://wolftowndiy.limitedrun.com/…/549838-lake-michigan-py… Listen here: https://lakemichigan.bandcamp.com/

Thnx x

[ruinedsmilerecords]

The Pjaro CD-Rs look like this. This is rs015.

[ruinedsmilerecords]

New release this week by Pjaro from Sheffield. This one was co-released with Certain Death in the UK. You can stream the tracks or pick up a copy via the bandcamp page.

[tyedietapes]

PJARO - SOFTCORE

Pjaro’s venture into the world of CD-r releases begins with Softcore. You can buy it to help the band claw back the cost of the whipped cream and sprinkles that was spent on Bobby.

Pre-order the Slowcore CD from bandcamp now by clicking here

[ruinedsmilerecords]

Getting together with Certain Death in the UK to give this an Australia release.

https://ruinedsmilerecords.bandcamp.com/album/softcore-ep