SPECIAL ROUND-UP – Local Bands of the Week! featuring THE GARRISON, DEEPSET, ANTI-PROTOKOL, BIG BANG & FUCKCHOP

Okay, here are five bands I found on MySpace which had kicked-started my mornings with much good vibes.

THE GARRISON
Kuala Lumpur

Playing a mix of lovers rock AKA downbeat reggae, acoustic dub & The Clash-inspired ’77 punk, THE GARRISON is a band to look out for, at the very least for its affinity to unpopular strain of punk and reggae. I mean a band that worships Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros is always super in my book!

go here to listen to their songs & download them: TheGarrison@MySpace or here TheGarrison@i-bands

DEEPSET
Kelana Jaya, PJ

Previously known as Deepset Joy, this band features a soaring, spacious and beautiful tune on their MySpace site. Where Were They (When The Fun Went Out)? sounds a bit like the local post-rock combo Furniture but leans more towards the dream-pop era of the late 80s British Indie. I like.

go here to listen to the song: Deepset@MySpace

ANTI-PROTOKOL
Serdang

Another blasting local D-Beat Scando-Punk terrorist. If you like Skullkrusher and Apparatus, then this is another band to look out for. Normally I find D-Beat rather wanting in its narrow corridors of influences but the four songs featured on Anti-Protokol’s MySpace are finely produced. I like, but I have always wondered how a D-Beat band can tell which song is which!

go here to listen to their songs: Anti-Protokol@MySpace

BIG BANG
Kuantan

Always on a look out for the eternally elusive but smashingly good local raw punk of the early-80s recklessness, I was at the brink of giving it all up until I stumbled upon Kuantan’s Big Bang. And man, I love the two songs featured on their MySpace page and have been cursing the fact that the band didn’t gimme the option of downloading the tunes. Dang!

Anyway, “USA” started with a clip of Prez Bush mouthing off some far-fetched bullshit about “American Justice” before bursting into an awesomely furious mixture of Oi!-inflected street punk and very early NYHC (that is before the crap metal guitars started creeping into that scene). It reminded of the early great UK bands such as The Insane and The Destructors.

Then we have “Guns For Palestine”, a mid-tempo anthemic street punk yell-along that goes back to the ol’ Brit skunk (skin + punk) mix such as The Blitz and The Accidents. Not as great as the USA song but the band played very, very well while the singer really ripped his tonsils out.

According to the site, apparently both of these songs are out on a comp called “Malaysian Rebelling Troops Vol. 2”, yeah, alarm bells rang when such a name cropped up. So I’ve sent a mail asking for the band’s lyrics (just to make sure) but the band wrote back that they are not good at English and so a bit shy to have them in the clear. Hmmmm.

Anyway, great tunes nevertheless and here’s hoping to know more about the band.

go here to listen to their songs: BigBang@MySpace

FUCK CHOP
Seremban

the old amazing Fuck Chop is now resurrected, at least in spirit, onto its own MySpace page. Maybe some of you are well too young to remember this Seremban noise duo but their tape, released under the beautifully named “Fuck Yr Friends Tape”, is quite a legendary addition to the now non-existent local industrial/noise scene of the mid to late 90s.

FUCK CHOP played with primitive samplers, broken guitars and a lot boredom. It’s low-fi noise terrorism beautifully done. Only 200 copies of the tape was made and now you finally have the chance to download the four songs from the web page.

go here to listen and downloads: FuckChop@MySpace

Of course, there are a lot of bands on MySpace and many have written to Ricecooker for us to go and check their songs out. For that, we are very thankful, but as usual most of them are not very good. But we are all eyes and ears for more.