Arriving soon!
Another blast of goldmine trash from Zaius Tapes, their continuted digging around in the never-rememered past this time unearthing the sole record by Canadian group Bunny & the Lakers. Information is characteristically thin on the ground (but of course), though the insert lists the involvement of six different players of typically post-punk associated instrumentation (guitar, drums, bass, synth), the sound they make landing very much in that sweet spot of rip it up and start again self-determining new wave experimentation that favours the outsider weirdo. As with so much music of this era and this kind of provenance, the results are often surprisingly addictive and accessible, even as they threaten to tip over in a heap of hot mess. Slightly brattish, sharp tongued vocals are traded, synths and guitars clatter up and down the stairs, and everyone sounds like they're having an awful lot of terrible fun even as they address the horrors of the unrelenting world, very much like, say, Pere Ubu with zero imagined audience. And that's not accounting for the 12 minute long, piano-led Les Disques du Crepuscule-styled closer 'Dolphin Bay', which given its place in the tracklising and all that's come before it, has to be viewed as some kind of reward. There's also a few forays into homemade electronics in the albums second half that had me thinking of Robert Rental, John Bender and Colin Potter in varying measures, which speaks most clearly to ...the Lakers unusual impulses. If you've heard the likes of Gerry & the Holograms, De Fabriek & Dome and wanted to to turn little further left, perhaps Bunny & the Lakers are the one for you? Just when you think the well has run dry, there's more still to be found...
FFO: John Bender, De Fabriek, Robert Rental, 3 Teens Kill 4, Gerry & the Holograms
