Print Head

Reviews

Print Head Change cassette

Brief eleven-song (none of them longer than a minute) tape from this Canadian punk band. The skittery drums and intertwining trebly guitar lines in “-Theme-” had me expecting an eggy CONEHEADS-core clone, but I was pleasantly surprised at the rest of the tape. With a vocalist that sounds like David Byrne on Adderall, PRINT HEAD buries new wave-y pop gems in bursting 78 RPM capsule form. Kind of like how LIQUIDS and BOOJI BOYS do it, these songs, especially standouts like “1,000,000 Opinions” and “What I Be,” are serious hits under the fuzz and hiss. Final track “Wanna Change” has a JAY REATARD sound, all fast-strumming, pure gold vocal melody, and it’s over before you can click the replay button. I really liked this.

Print Head In Motion cassette

It’s a challenge—a fun challenge!—to keep up with every limited-run cassette release from Canada’s prolific PRINT HEAD, a.k.a. Brandon Saucier. The man put out something like six or seven of these last year, and 2022 appears to be bringing us more of the same. In Motion doesn’t deviate far from the formula of aggressively lo-fi, egg-flavored punk, but hidden (just barely) beneath all the noise and chaos are some pretty tuneful and competent songs. PRINT HEAD may be mining similar territory as other hyperactive noiseniks like SET-TOP BOX and ERIK NERVOUS, but it’s definitely worth checking out on its own—all of it!

Print Head Made By Yesterday EP

PRINT HEAD appears to be on a tear these last few pandemic years, putting out limited-run tapes every six months or so. Each of the songs on this EP run about a minute, a few seconds under or over, in a hyperactive, bifurcated pop style of squawky bird guitar parts and loping basslines hopscotching over stunted drum thudding. Fans of the new CHERRY CHEEKS record or RESEARCH REACTOR CORP. would probably be attracted by the notebook margin doodles adorning the cover, but instead of the robo-jerk rhythms those bands parry in, PRINT HEAD has a danceably nervous groove underlined by the ecstatic, especially on the song “Wild Ways.” If they wanted to stretch out the songs and production beyond the 4-track basement tape style, the songs show the potential for PRINT HEAD to reach beyond the scratchy, lo-fi underrealm of post-egg-punk stylings.

Print Head boringboring cassette

One of the like six or seven cassettes this project released in 2021. If you’re unfamiliar with PRINT HEAD, the anything-goes no-fi recordings of prolific Canadian Brandon Saucier, this is probably as good a place as any to start. The five tracks on this release are easier to digest than the potentially daunting (though very excellent) 25-track compilation cassette that Discos Peroquébien put out last year, and it’s less likely to rankle than his cassette of PARQUET COURTS covers. And you’re getting a pretty good idea of what PRINT HEAD is all about—minute-long vignettes exploring a variety of punkish sounds. The first few tracks hew a little closer to the garage-y end of the punk spectrum with a touch of DEVO-core (you just can’t get away from it these days!), but it’s never really eggy—think if early TYVEK was a little more herky-jerky. And the rest of the tracks take some of the tunefulness that you’d find in mid-’90s GUIDED BY VOICES and weds that to the concrete-slicing jazzy funk-punk of early MINUTEMEN. Really compelling stuff—give it a go!

Print Head Happy Happy & Hardcore Pop cassette

Part Messthetics-informed outsider post-punk, part no-fi DIY hometaper pop, as performed entirely by one Canadian named Brandon Saucier. Happy Happy & Hardcore Pop collects the material from two earlier self-released cassettes and clocks in at a sprawling 26 tracks, of which only three are over two minutes long (and just barely at that)—an all-new PRINT HEAD tape actually popped up like a week or two after this one came out, and Saucier definitely seems like someone forever working at a Jad Fair/Mark E. Smith-like clip when it comes to songwriting (possible FALL reference in the project name is telling?). Opener “Repeat” rides a killer kinetic rhythm with a loping bass line and faux-motorik beat, then adds some heavy existential anxiety from detached vocals intoning lines like “What will you be thinking / While you die?” over barbed guitar clang and clattering percussion. And the hits keep coming: the blown-out, blink-and-you-missed-it “All is Over” recalls Siltbreeze-era TIMES NEW VIKING with some off-kilter hooks and junky keyboard, there’s a nod to the FIRE ENGINES on the dirty basement disco-punk instrumental “Instrumental,” “Went Out Last Night” pulls off some NWI-by-way-of-Hardcore Devo tricks…and that’s barely scratching the surface; veritable kitchen-sink weirdo punk to the max here.