Dot Dash Sounds

Nape Neck

The Shallowest End

Dot Dash Sounds

***"Nape Neck is an apex predator, a ghost in the machine, a call to arms, and one of the most electrifying rock bands on the planet. For the last five years, Nape Neck has been perfecting their sharp-angled post-punk—patiently, steadily, unerringly—and The Shallowest End is proof of concept, spread out over ten songs of gratifying anxiety. Based in Leeds, England, the trio consists of bassist/singer Claire Adams (also in the excellent Objections), drummer/singer Kathy Gray, and guitarist/singer Bobby Glew (also drummer in scorched-earth noise rock duo Guttersnipe). While The Shallowest End is Nape Neck’s first full-length album, it is not their debut. That would be the self-titled LP that came out earlier in 2025 which collected the band’s first two cassette EPs into a single volume of bruising and playful rhythm-focused punk rock. Along with that collection, The Shallowest End is being released into the world by three cutting-edge labels—Red Wig (Germany), OCCII, Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Dot Dash Sounds (USA).Nape Neck sprouts up in the agitprop section of the record store, the area where movement—geographical, calisthenic, revolutionary—is necessary. As humanity pushes against the limits of technological utopianism, Nape Neck brings you back to your body, its place in the public sphere and what it means to be a functioning person within the confines that society has erected to contain you. With every stinging guitar line, coiled bass riff and well-placed drum hit, Nape Neck is outlining a means of resistance, without sacrificing the pleasures of the flesh. The trio operate...

Discreet Charms

Delivery Model Stateholder Meeting

Dot Dash Sounds

***"Brooklyn art-punk conglomerate Discreet Charms is proof that you can go home again, especially if home is the cool dive bar on the wrong side of town. The place where the grizzled intellectuals teach the new bohemians how to drink, fight and fuck. Punked-out, hard-rocking and adroit, Discreet Charms is the soundtrack to such sordid yet elevated undertakings.Kicking off in 2023, the original trio of Jose Moreno (guitar/vocals/synth), Nate Knaebel (bass/vocals) and Tom Hyland (drums/vocals) came off like a fresh coat of paint on your favorite whip. Moreno plays with Portland, Maine-based Beefheart-ian outsiders Celebrity Handshake, while Knaebel once cavorted with indie rock royalty in Victoria Lucas. Hyland’s last band was underrated late ‘00s post-punkers Imaginary Icons, who even backed up the Homosexuals’ Bruno Wizard for a spell. You may also recognize these gentlemen under different monikers—Knaebel is Nate the K and Hyland is Tom Dash on freeform radio stalwart WFMU. With a line-up like that, you’d think Discreet Charms were sitting pretty, but when they added guitarist Theresa Smith everything locked into place. Smith’s CV highlights her time in scuzz-rockers Ballroom and avant-pop ensemble Home Blitz, two of NYC’s finest of the past decade. After dropping a cassette EP, Discreet Charms is now on the offensive with Delivery Model Stateholder Meeting..."—Erick Bradshaw (Spin Age Blasters with Creamo Coyl on WFMU)

C.A.D. & The Peacetime Consumers

Play Atlantis

Dot Dash Sounds

***Detroit area psych rockers led by Chris Durham. Heavy 60s freak-beat, Syd-era Floyd meets early 70s Alice Cooper prog-psych vibes."With a pre-Asylum Laurel Canyon vibe by way of those busted Wayne County roads, Play Atlantis deftly splits the difference between the Straight and the Bizarre. Though the committed students of a variety of moldy freaks from the bygone days, Christopher Alan Durham and his Peacetime Consumers have crafted new mutant strains of lysergic choogle to guide righteous outsiders through the dawn's early light."—Nate K. host of Burn It Down! on WFMU"C.hris A.lan D.urham emerges with the Peacetimers Straight Outta Del Ray, Michigan. C.A.D. & The Peacetimers enter a studio and come out with jams akin to early Pink Floyd singles and Easy Action-era Alice Cooper moves. Straight-up NZ jammers like 'Into the Void' or Soft Boys-styled 'Blue Toy'. Some of the best codas I’ve heard in recent years. Chris and the Consumers make the stench of Del Ray, MI become hazy and psychedelic like it’s 1966 Texas."—Damon Sturdivant: Puffy Areolas,Tyvek,Revigorant etc"New music by Christopher Alan Durham is always welcome in my small part of the world. It customarily comes with a certain amount of his trademark tape hiss, but being that Play Atlantis is an actual ROCK AND ROLL* record by a band with a thunderous yet dextrous rhythm section, the increased fidelity of this release is not only welcome, but utterly necessary. The record starts with the classic sound of a reverberating drum roll, and proceeds to warp idiosyncratically...

Leopardo

SIDE A / SIDE B

Dot Dash Sounds

***"Leopardo, the well-mannered and quirky Swiss group from Fribourg, are back once again with SIDE A / SIDE B, an album that invites the world into their jagged and naïve psych-pop and electrified tape experiments that undercuts conventions and create a scanty, but vivid compendium of absurdity, delicacy, and humor, à la The Velvets, Slapp Happy, Desperate Bicycles, and the Performing Ferret Band. While 2021’s Malcantone displayed sketches of a group in progress and 2023’s full-length was a somewhat “best of” solo recordings from bandleader Romain Savary, Side A / Side B seems to identify a new chapter of the group’s knowingly charming perfect unpop with a fully observant long-term trajectory and naïve spirit that makes humanity more believable."—Joe Massaro, Hot Sounds

Nape Neck

s/t

Dot Dash Sounds

***Leeds UK, fractured, frenetic post-punk trio. Heavy, intense rhythms with male/female vocals from all members - wild flurry in the Erase Errata, The Ex realms. Debut LP compiles their two self-released cassettes, remixed and remastered for vinyl. Members of Objections, Guttersnipe.First US tour in the works for this fall!

Cell\Borg

Smash Blips

Dot Dash Sounds

***Coastal recording project with 2 cassettes out on Fuzzy Warbles. Smash Blips is the debut LP of collected tracks re-mastered by Mikey Young. Synth/Wave vibes in the NDW / Kosmich e / Eno / Numan vein. Pressed on turquoise vinyl. Includes an insert. "In the mid-70s, Michael Rother of Neu! and Harmonia would sit by the German river Weser and watch the water flow by. The flow of the river contributed to the rhythm known as 'Motorik', a stately European pulse. Perhaps the Weser continued its journey across continents and oceans, enveloping primordial British DIY electronics and found its way snaking up through the Hudson, past Brooklyn, towards the Great Lakes and the Midwest, down the Cuyahoga in Ohio and somehow finding its way to Los Angeles. If one can imagine the motorik sound surging through the proto-punk American underground of the mid-70s via cassette tapes and ma bell trunk lines you can imagine what art-damaged outsiders armed with ring modulators, primal drum machines and pop sensibilities might have done with it. Nearly 50 years later a potential result is clear. The sound might be crisper, now traveling trans-am fiber-optic cables, from B\CELL in Brooklyn to J\CELL and M\BORG in Los Angeles, but the aesthetic remains. Appropriately released on cassette and digital download first, now we can finally hear the results on the cutting edge of 1970s audio formats, the vinyl Long Play."—Dan Selzer, Acute Records/New York Endless

Weegee

Primitive Thrill

Dot Dash Sounds

***Dark, post-punk with some Bad Seeds/These Immortal Souls vibes. The band has been toiling in the studio for sevral years and are now playing live shows with this new release coming out. "When Weegee’s self-released tape dropped last year, a small cadre of New York City’s finest sat up, fixed their hair and paid close attention. We’re not talking coppers, we’re talking rockers. Out of nowhere (Brooklyn/Queens), came this lumbering beast with a fresh kill between its teeth. Listening to Primitive Thrill, the darkside walkers recognized the skill and artistry on display, and the little green demon reared its ugly head. Who wouldn’t be envious of this exquisite debut, so completely assured in its crushed-velvet luxury and elevated aura of desperation and mortality—a Technicolor take on an iconic photo by the band’s namesake. Like a black cat on a windowsill, Weegee’s songs stretch out at their own pace, by turns languid, tense, enveloping. There is a patience at play that is rarely heard in the trash rock gutter that Weegee calls home. Courtesy of a new mix and master, the vinyl edition of Primitive Thrill, out on Dot Dash Sounds, is now even more widescreen—a landscape to get truly, willingly lost in..."—Erick Bradshaw

Red Herrings

Zax Armoire

Dot Dash Sounds

***"Zax Armoire marks the debut LP release for Red Herrings. This newer band is a welcome addition to the well worn punk, psych, rock'n'roll scene of Western Massachusetts. Their first official release burns heavy in distorto/fuzz, punk rock action. Riff heavy, garage stomp and killer howlin' vocals jump out of the speakers. Duel guitar buzz fuses with a hard rhythm section, propelling the party. While members have been banging it out in various regional bands for years, this marks Red Herrings' first full length with more scorched sounds to come! Shout out to fellow Western Mass outsider cosmic, punk guitar guru Anthony Pasquarosa (Gluebag, Weeping Bong Band, Burnt Envelope) for turning the label onto this band via their 2022 demos"— TomDash. RIYL: Mudhoney, Dead Moon, Stooges, DMZ, Blue Cheer, Monoshock.

Sheaves, The

A Salve For Institution

Dot Dash Sounds

***The second LP from this inspired Phoenix DIY punk outfit. "Upstart New York label Dot Dash Sounds have teamed up with Paris' estimable SDZ to bang out this sophomore effort by The Sheaves, an outfit of desert peccaries whose swinley snouts have expertly strung together another string of stinging pearls for thine earholes. If the Placebo Records track team had a miler as lopey as this bunch, those trophy cups would have been perpetually brimming with Champagne's finest export."—Tom Lax, Siltbreeze Records