#cellular automation

[dustedmagazine]

New Buck Biloxi — Cellular Automation (Total Punk)

Cellular Automaton by NEW BUCK BILOXI

It's hardly blasphemous to think that at some point, the building blocks of punk aren't going to produce a solid enough foundation to maintain an album's worth of noise. But that time, at least under the watch of Buck Biloxi, has yet to come. 

On his 2022 release for Total Punk, Cellular Automation, New Orleanian Rob Craig, aka Buck Biloxi, and his latest "new" line-up (no more Fucks, folks) mine familiar territory. The lean and mean LP delivers relentless buzzsaw chords, thudding four-on-the-floor rhythms, and plenty of arch, caustic observations about our inevitable "bad future," as one track puts it, generated by the alienation factory that is contemporary society. It all comes wrapped in a warped, mechanical minimalism that transplants the songs from the garage to more subterranean environs conducive to another fortifying round of aesthetic devolution. 

How these songs can be as exhilarating, provocative, and toe-tapping as the best of a genre well past the half-century mark is a testament to Craig's abilities as a songwriter. There is true craft here. He knows precisely which riffs hit like a gut punch and which make you want to throw one yourself; he knows when to roll his eyes and when to give the listener some real talk. The component parts may be simple, but it requires a deft touch to map yet another bleak picture of tomorrow (or today for that matter) onto a simple punk template and not only avoid sounding tired or heavy-handed but deliver something vital. New or old, Fucks or no Fucks, Buck nails it. 

Nate Knaebel

[ajlikesfun]

[audiovisualoverload-blog-blog]

Very cool matrix style sequencer, but can generate never repeating slowly evolving music progressions.