I.L.L.O. 10 Ill Songs cassette
A member of Leipzig’s ONYON goes solo, and while my patience for home recording projects of this ilk (loopy, lo-fi punk replete with drum machine) has worn extremely thin over the last several years, I.L.L.O.’s take on the form actually offers a focused and tightened-up counterpoint to ONYON’s neo-new wave garage warblings, which I’ve often found to be frustratingly flat. Threadbare, wiry guitar hits the target a few rings removed from a PETTICOATS bullseye—the intro to “Summoning” is an especially blatant “Normal” fake-out, although any further expectations of detuned DIY clang in that track are quickly dashed in favor of rumpled, lilting bedroom pop of the late ’80s/early ’90s K Records variety—whereas the gentle, falling-apart DIY stumble of “Way of the Shrimp” is more suggestive of a post-egg-punk MARINE GIRLS (is that a recorder solo?!), and “The End is Coming” and “The Unknown” have the sort of coolly minimal art-punk jitteriness I’ll always welcome, thankfully much more COME ON than CONEHEADS. Nothing on 10 Ill Songs is going to set the world on fire, but that hardly seems to be the point of it anyway.