Monroeville Music Center - Choose Your Own Adventure (2013)

Here's the third new tape we have - and you're probably already saying, "wait, you idiots, this post is tagged 2013, the year is 2015, how can you call this a new tape?" WELL, Mr. Smartypants, since you're so good with years and stuff we suppose you're partly correct (honestly, we're crap with dates, both in term of the temporal and romantic). This was originally released in digital form in 2013, but 2015 sees a proper (and glorious) physical release.

Monroeville Music Center is yet another project from Craig Storm, and we're kind of surprised that we haven't included anything from this side of his work yet. While we've featured his weirdo guitar bands before, this is his weirdo keyboard band. The drum machines go ricky-ticky-tick-tack, the keys go bloopy-bloop-squelch and we kind of go apeshit about this (in the good way, not the smearing poop on the walls way). The eight tracks on here, named after honest-to-gosh-totally-real-and-not-made-up Choose Your Own Adventure titles sound like either the theme song from an 80's TV special, the chase music from an 80's TV special, or the ending credits from an 80's TV special. This is really, really good stuff.

You can order this tape via the MMC bandcamp. It's worth noting that Storm also has an MMC quarterly cassette you can subscribe to; we just signed up and we'll advise you of the contents when we get our first issue.

Fags - Rip-Offs (2015)

The new, really nicely-packaged tape posts continue with one of our favourite garage rock combos, the Fags.

Since their inception as a two piece with Daaren Boreham on Rickenbacker and Dale Hart on drums, this band has swollen in size much like their counterparts the Pygmies. This tape captures an in-between phase, after they had picked up Rosemary Stewart on the combo organ, but before Kelly Sutherland had joined on second Rickenbacker. The Fags' live set is largely made up of (excellent) garage rock covers, so it's not very surprising that the two songs on this gorgeous pink cassette are also covers (by the Rip-Offs as well as Siouxie and the Banshees). The two tracks clock in at a little under four minutes in total, but this is highly recommended for its energy, pink case, and Rosemary Stewart's vocals on "Love in a Void." It also comes with what is quite possibly the lowest-quality download mp3s we've ever encountered (96 kbps?!?! who knew there was still such a thing?).

We're not sure where to get this yet, as it was delivered to us by courier pigeon. The Fags don't appear to have any sort of a web presence, so we suggest you just hang around wherever there are Rickenbackers and Vespas.

Racket - 64 (2015)

After what feels like a slow start to the year, we're pleased to have a bunch of new tapes in the CCPS offices. Not just that, but we're pleased to say they're all quite good and really well-packaged.

You might remember about a year ago, when we bought Racket's first tape off their bandcamp site, and the postage on the envelope ended up being more than we paid. That still haunts us, so we actually went to their release party at the Palomino last night and picked up a copy in person.

Under the dim lights of the Pal, we weren't able to appreciate the full beauty of the packaging of this tape (in the harsh light of the morning's hangover, we're still only partially able to appreciate it, but still...). The guys have done a great job of making this look like an olde schoole N64 cartridge, but don't fear! Even though there's a bit of blippy bloopy 8-bit synth action at the start of the tape, the rest is the scrappy, fast garage rock that these guys are known for. They even throw in fan-favourite "Chicken Nugget" as a bonus track.

Racket were pretty good about getting their first tape out to the local stores, so you should be able to find this in short order at your local shop or the Racket bandcamp.