The Permanent update had this to say about Zig Zags:
New 7in - Zig Zags - Scavenger b/w Wastin My Time - Mexican Summer is uppin' the scum with this sordid little platter and this what they're sayin':
"Zig Zags. Los Angeles. Named after the shoes. That’s what we were wearing at the time… “Scavenger”- unloads like Budgie’s “Breadfan” played in a high school heavy metal bedroom while the band screams threats to all freeloaders and marauders who show up to parties empty handed. “Wastin’ My Time”-a more straightforward punker, keeps up the tempo but locks into a repetitive krautrock groove that worms its way into your ear holes like those brain eating maggots in Beastmaster. Cover dude (drawn by Chad Kawamura of the Outdoorsmen) getting eating by a vulture is one of the aforementioned freeloaders we have to deal with out here while our dead friend Randy watches the carnage drunk on Olympia beer like a zombie Clint Eastwood. Zig Zags have shared personnel with West Coast nose-garage royalty the Intelligence and Unnatural Helpers, and make their Mexican Summer debut with this fine piece of plastic."
Yeah, that's all totally spot on. The "Breadfan" riff reference especially is super apt, we're hearing some hairy Hawkwind/Motorhead speed freak jean jacket hesher vibes fer sure. The B-side is a little more in the pocket taking its time to unwind and lay into a hefty mid-tempo groove set on sully, spit and repeat. All in all you're gettting 2 high quality rippers by low-life revellers; plus with cover art by an Outdoorsmen duder, this is the total package. Get one now, ‘fore they're gone for good. Super Recommended.
It's a pretty rad move to just come right out in your official label blurb and say "we stole a riff and here's where it's from." It's so credworthy we'll leave them alone for getting their guitar tone more in line with the Metallica cover. It's just a riff, not a whole raison d'être, and if an "...And Justice For All" era Metallica also liked it enough to jump on the bandwagon, then fair play all around. It's not like the Zig Zags are out there copping moves from "St. Anger."
And while the Budgie riff-rip on the awesome "Scavenger" is clogging the blog-bytes and sending us down YouTube investigation wormholes, lost in the shuffle is the fact that B-side "Wastin My Time" is just about completely fucking perfect, like to a "are we sure this isn't the a-side" degree. You can listen to it here if you don't believe.
Possible Budgie-lawyer fear has limited this thing to 300, which is an unacceptably small pressing for the material.
Permanent put out our own 7" recently, a Ty Segall / Feeling Of Love split for their now-over 5 date west coast tour. Update entry says what:
New 7in - Feeling Of Love - Ty Segall - Tour Split (Black Vinyl, Ltd 550) - In celebration of their 2012 US tour, French glue-wave garage psychsters Feeling Of Love have joined forces with San Francisco's garage rock prince Ty Segall for this LIMITED EDITION split single. Both tracks are EXCLUSIVE to this release. Feeling Of Love and Ty Segall will be sharing the stage in SF, LA, and San Diego.
Review of Feeling of Love's 'Dissolve Me' from GET BENT: "Drawing from influences such as the Velvet Underground and krautrock bands like Neu!, Dissolve Me is darkly hypnotic and repetitive."
From Pop Matters:
Segall’s standout 2011 album Goodbye Bread, in particular, pushed the limits of garage rock’s nuts-and-bolts conventions, blending in easy, blissed-out harmonies without losing any of the ramshackle spontaneity that makes garage rock what it is.
If there's anything going on in Big Money Rock that's been more criminally unattended to by the hullabaloo machine than the Australian scene, it's the Metz, France collective of which Feeling Of Love is a vital part. They even have that cute little genre-title. What more do you lazy pigfuckers over at Pitchfork want?
Case in point: I just went to Vice's "Noisey" site following up after a Google hit, and a video they did with the Feeling Of Love guys got a grand total of 12 Facebook likes. Which means either only 12 people are paying attention or The Feeling Of Love have a million adoring fans who are too smart for Facebook and Vice. As long as one of those likes is DJ Rick, I think they'll be fine.
Regardless (toot toot toot our own horns alert) both cuts on this platter are great. Ty Segall is putting out music at an "I'm officially worried that he's been diagnosed with something terminal" rate, and I could not be more pumped for the upcoming collaboration with White Fence. But of course the quality has been so high for so long, anything Ty Segall blasts out is a sight unseen gimme gimme at this point. The Feeling Of Love should be in that territory as well, but are inexplicably not. Oh well. At a pressing of 550, I'm sure it'll wind up moot on this one.
The Perm update had this nugget about Unity Floors:
New 7in - Unity Floors - Women's Golf EP (Import) - KILLER debut from this Sydney, Australia duo - Unity Floors! Man-O-man we were floored by this one from the first spin - urgent, chiming guitars swoosh and sway over rollicking drums while vocalist/guitarist Gus Hunt cooly crooning over the tune sounding not-unlike a young David Gedge from the Wedding Present. We're also picking up a definite Flying Nun vibe; The Clean's influence is all over this as well as The Verlaines too. With only three tunes on this 7" platter, the heavenly vibes don't last long enough - we're ga-ga for Australia and this is another perfect example of that continent's winning streak in the pop music realm along with countrymen Woollen Kits and also The Twerps. Not sure of the pressing size, but we have a feeling it's not too sizeable, so don't snooze on this one! RECOMMENDED!
Unity Floors is one of those "we get 5 and they're gone by the time the staff hears it once" numbers that Permanent was somehow able to restock for the time being. The actual scum stats, if the insert is to be believed, sit at a cozy hand-numbered 300, and it looks to be self-released. Once you tear it open, the "download code" for mp3s is an email address that appears to go directly to the band, in case you need a new penpal.
Regardless, herein lie a great couple of moody mid-tempo scrapers in "Boil the Ocean" and "Nobody Home" on the A, with an actual song song song in "Identity Theft" on the B, all of which manage to conjure a 90's vibe without getting all weepy and self-important. THAT, my friends, is an achievement. It might be the case that the A side is the B side and vice-versa. The runout grooves say one thing while the bandcamp says another, but for the purposes of tossing this whole thing together under the banner of "recent 7"es with underrated B-sides," I'm fudging the numbers.
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