Room 101 "Vox Humana" on X-Mist / Beau Travail Records

DIY is the one man band. There is nothing more punk rock, more hardcore than one guy out there like Room 101, saying his peace without the help from anyone - well that's not true of course he's got help from a lot of people as the liner notes will attest. I think it's about having that drive to work on this project, playing shows, traveling, putting songs together...it's all motivated by that one person. If you don't feel like doing something than it's not going to get done. To be working in this hardcore punk style can't come easy either, conjuring up this energy when the rest of the world is asleep but you are fucking pissed about these god damn drones. It's the most boring job in the air force which is inevitably going to lead to a bunch of fuck ups, but it's just a video screen in a far away country - who cares. Room 101 gets me fired up about this stuff again and takes me right back to Bedtime For Democracy which was designed by Winston Smith, who put this sleeve together. Things never change, you just get older.

A-Side's "Drone War" drops the mechanical hardcore right on the first beat with regular bursts of kicks and tambourine hits, screaming that title lyric 'DRONE WAR!'. Room 101 has always been political from the beginning and I get too complacent listening to nice reverb songs about getting fucked up and the beach. There's real shit going on and maybe I don't want to deal with it, but it's not getting any better. The only way I can imagine Roburt doing this himself is with the help of a shitty drum machine track but it's not sounding like the usual crazy electronic punk like Sick Thoughts, DD Owen, there's more of a pop punk sound here with layers of handclaps and those guitars leaning towards a little garage. It's got all the jagged starts and stops of tirelessly going after these gated guitar bursts. Roburt's clearly just messing with us coming up with a catchy pop handclap chorus about dying and celebrating. Reminds me of another punk band that I used to skate to in the garage.
"Exterminate Adult Thinking (featuring XVC)" a slow ride cymbal leads to a relentless 4/4 at spastic speed but the guitar is cranking this even faster forcing that machine part to give up, this hardcore John Henry isn't going to be led by this tempo. More of that jagged punk that fires in machine gun bursts. Also the track isn't about just exterminating the thinking but literally get rid of those jerks who can't think outside that adult box, like say for example that maybe people who want to get married can? Damn this is getting me all riled up like Fox News.
The B-Side's "Boiys" has a smirking waltz rhythm of laid back organ and muted chords talking about this plague of boys at brunch and being sassy. I like this more subtle and twisted look at contemporary culture, you don't go after the obvious targets, it's about that weirder bigger picture while you poke fun at your own instrumentation at the same time. At the risk of not being cool you write the weirdest goofy carnival song sneering alongside your subject? It's not an obvious direction and what makes it that much better in the end, a direct result of a singular twisted vision just doing whatever the hell he wants.

Lots of inserts; fake money and a sticker to 'support the war machine', lyric sheet, liner notes and a picture of Roburt about to wipeout on the floor from singing like a maniac and thrashing all over the place.
Contact Roburt (room10101 at hotmail) for this one unless you live in europe and lucky you, it's down the street at X-Mist and Beau Travail Records.

Room 101 "The Grand Prize Game" - self released

Roburt Reynolds is the man behind Room 101. He recorded and played everything on this five song EP and even tours by himself from the looks of it. How the hell he's putting together these hardcore bursts live has to be worth catching, it's weirdly intricate even mathy at times but loud while sounding buried back in late '80s hardcore.

"Recognize You" is hard out of the gate, real rough with treble guitar bursts chopped into pieces, Roburt is delivering these lyrics before they even have time to settle into meaning. Jangle spazzy guitar, this hits a double time section that gets him going even faster, vocals breaking. Low end chords that ramp up to high ones, he's programmed this drum machine to completely malfunction and then rehearsed for a LONG time to get these changes...a serious exercise in complexity. "Popularity" speeds in an off kilter rhythm, Roburt includes a little melody in this and it's almost garage if it weren't so crazily buried, so muddy it must have been ripped straight off the cassettes. The speed is also something you don't expect from this kind of catchy pop punk. He's got a manic tongue biting mental breakdown delivery of early Dead Kennedys combined with an almost late '90s industrial sound.
"Soul Finger" weird klunky chords with heavy echo in that 4track scary style, the presence of those recordings this is exactly what worried you a little bit, the punk that seemed to be right up to the line of too extreme for the guys in the garage. The bass line takes over revving this up and grinding to a hault in a free jazz vocal, screamed over the meltdown of guitars and out of tune chords.

B-Side's "Fascion (with XVC)" has a dirge style slow krunky opening, the drums even sound slowed down a bit - wait this side is pressed at 45? Still slow but with an groove hard edge kept in line with the the guitar that's off on its own anti-melodies. Something like the mathy powerhouse parts of Unwound. His wife yelling "FASCION!" is a nice touch, everything direct into a 4-track and teased out vocally. Echo damaged guitar, the bass trying to keep this on a solid even keel, but the whole thing keeps careening around completely off course and it doesn't take long to just sink directly to the bottom. "Los Desaparecidos" is the shortest protest, super spazz hardcore, kick snare machine gun style, stops for a second for a bassline to break this up, but it's got to be a ten second song tops. Maybe this one is supposed to be at 33?

On purple vinyl with lots of insets, like the 0 dollar bills with US Treasury facts on the reverse. They aren't fun but as long as this paper buys me more single then I don't CARE.