Best of 2020
Having re-emerged from the wilderness last year with that 7" on IDDB, Surface of the Earth's Paul Toohey's fabled side hustle K-Group serves up its first album in nearly 20 years via the excellent Knotwilg label (home also to that incredible Stefan Christenesen record, City Code - back in stock btw). As brilliantly torn and frayed as ever, it's as if no time has passed, the lathe cut shangri-las of Xpressway and World Resources renaminted amidst a requisite fog of static, drone and glacial-pace feedback, as straight up punk and iconoclastic as ever. That this isn't limited to a show-only cassette or edition of 17 lathe cut 10" tells you a little about the renewed interest for this kind of business (by way of Liz Harris, Kali Malone, even the constant activity of noise rock lifer Roy Montgomery, no doubt), but like spiritual brethrens the Dead C, this is the gold standard, root and branch of it all. A catatonic, narcotised wander through Toohey's scorched earth underground never felt so apt.
