We asked adopted Angeleno extraordinaire Sean Carnage to continue presenting his series of mixtapes collecting some of his favorite bands—local and otherwise. Here’s the second installment! (And click here if you missed the first!)

Los Angeles is currently at the beginning of a huge musical renaissance. There are so many local bands and performers—many of them Monday nighters—grabbing the national spotlight (like Abe Vigoda, Health, The Mae Shi, Captain Ahab and Nosaj Thing and the list goes on…).

But it’s the new, unheard of bands that continue to command my attention most. Why? The burst of creativity that accompanies a band’s initial birth is so pure and wonderful. For a diehard music fan, it’s like seeing all the possibilities of life expressed through sound. Here’s some more of the best new music. Do check them out!

The Press Fire! — “Hipster Crickets”
The Press Fire! seemed to come out of nowhere to upstage nearly everyone at one of the biggest Monday shows I ever hosted—the tribute to the songs of I.E. this past May. TPF!’s cover of Margot Padilla’s “You Think You’re Cool” was like one non-stop orgasm of confrontational brattiness. With “Hipster Crickets,” the Press Fire! has preserved that new attitude and applied it to one of their own self-penned creations. Perfection, non?

NASA Space Universe — Cover of unreleased White Flag song
In my last podcast I mentioned how sad I was NASA Space Universe broke up…but they hadn’t split! This OC unit is once again gigging around the area, packing shows at the Smell, and laying waste to everyone’s musical sensibilities with their raging hardcore. Like this—a cover of an unreleased White Flag song, recorded with Bill Bartell (aka Pat Fear).

Anavan — “Chicken & Cheese 2 (Originally by Foot Village)”
Notice how certain bands sound best when they work together with friends? Such is the case with Anavan and Foot Village. Here’s another Anavan re-working of a FV anthem. This time, the reference is not acid house, but Prince-like new wave funk. I can’t stop dancing (or singing in falsetto)! Go to http://footvillage.org/music/anti-magic-friends to learn about and hear mp3s from the Foot Village’s myriad collaborators.

Sex-S — “Sex Anonymous”
Sam Lubicz is another longtime Monday showgoer that (seemingly) pulled a talent for music right out of thin air. With support from Liam Morrison (drummer for the impeccably chaotic and rocking Amazements) Sam crafts some devilishly hook-y musical collages (like the one here released under his “Sex-S” moniker) and also toasts over freeform reggae tracks (as the outrageously racist/homophobic/misogynist “Jamaica Man”).

60 Watt Kid “2012”
Long Beach’s 60 Watt Kid make the perfect summer music. Witness “2012”—a sneak preview of an exciting new batch of recordings from the trio. The Kid’s burbling, repetitive, trance-inducing flow is perfect bed for singer Kevin’s wild and soulful vocals. It’s kind of like Elvis circa the year 3000, with Neu! as his back up band.

Double Dagger “We Are the Ones”
Double Dagger—a trio from Baltimore, Maryland—was one of the most physical bands I hosted all summer. They distill everything I love about ‘90s post-grunge underground music into a new style that feels totally fresh and progressive. And that’s what underground music is all about: taking the wreckage we’ve been left with by previous
generations and making something revolutionary—and beautiful—from the debris.

Sean Carnage Monday Nights (version 1.0) ends after four years and 200+ consecutive shows with a huge party—and complimentary Scoops Gelato cocktails! So be a part of history and make sure you attend Women (1852 Crenshaw, 9:30pm) on Monday, July 27th. Then I’m back with an all new run of Sean Carnage Mondays starting Monday, September 7th. My only credo: The best of the cutting-edge every Monday, and only five bucks…See you then?

Download: Sean Carnage’s Mondays mega-mix

We asked Sean Carnage—interviewed to mark his four years of D.I.Y. all-ages shows here—to make a mixtape that captures a bit of what he loves about music in L.A. Download and listen above and annotated tracklist by Sean below:

Realicide “Resisting The Viral Self”
Just a brief sample from Robert Inhuman, whose music on “Resisting the Viral Self”—despite it’s audiophonic brutality—is all too human and affecting.

Winners “Mega Dik”
Andrew, the singer of “Mega Dik,” was something of a Monday Night super fan for years. When he later started making music with Eva (aka Kevin Shields), I was pleasantly surprised. These two are up north now, and I’m crossing my fingers they continue with their joyfully confrontational band.

The Amazements “Tutti Frutti”
“Tutti Fruit” is a song off the Amazements’ new Peter’s Poolboys’ LP Sticky Rubies. They’re kinda like Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band wrestling U.S. Maple in a hot tub full of beer: avant garde and loose.

I.E. “You Think You’re Punk”
“You Think You’re Punk” could only have been written by Margot Padilla. Margot’s Totally Mag! magazine is a sick send-up of celebrity pop culture and perfectly compliments her music.

Mikki & the Mauses
Here’s a new band with a devastatingly catchy track. They’re playing my four year anniversary show on July 27th, and I’m really excited about that after all this time, there’s so many new bands to discover.

NASA Space Universe
NASA Space Universe apparently broke up recently, but I’m holding out hope for new music from these OC bros because, even a year after I got this track, I am still listening to it all the freaking time! Perfect for after work/school venting.

John Thill
Thill’s also moved up north, but he was just back for a Monday night appearance to remind us all what genius creations his acoustic jams are.

Foot Village “Crow Call (Anavan remix)”
The members of Foot Village and Anavan have been big Monday supporters, and if there was any justice in the world, this remix would be burning up dance floors around the planet

Kyle H. Mabson “Don’t Stop Believin”
“Don’t Stop Believin’” sums the Sean Carnage Mondays story very nicely I think. My Monday partner Kyle created this…I only included a short excerpt—if you are brave there’s a twenty minute version that will take the top of your head off. Enjoy!

One must personally invest in subject matter. In the case of Monotonix, that dedication involves a smush of bodies holding each other by the waist with one hand and passing around people in the air with the other. Perhaps that involves your own body, whether you asked for it or not, rising seven feet in the air on drunk people’s fingertips. The Monotonix threesome is the hairiest, sweatiest 3-headed creature since mythological times. There’s a blues-riffing guitar and a rousing drumbeat, but the physicality of the band’s performance overshadows everything else. The look in singer Levi “Ha Haziz” Elvis’s eyes, wide open and peering about, is louder than the English and/or Hebrew words he’s growling into the microphone. Anavan’s Aaron Buckley took on the role of making sure the mic, as well as the guitar and drum being tossed around Spaceland, remained plugged in. He appeared delighted with the responsibility—as focused as a hyena. Earlier, Anavan opened the evening’s events by delivering that warm, gushy tootsie-pop three licks below its hard-candy shell. The Mae Shi played next, pep-rally shouting in unison while the audience played under the band’s signature parachute tarp—we all miss kindergarten, don’t deny it. Tonight’s lineup combined effectively to unwind any gripes dragged in, draining the mind of all bullshit. The room reeked of camaraderie and armpits by the time “Ha Aziz” turned his underwear into a thong.

“My body language says I am not afraid.” — Monotonix

—Daiana Feuer

daiana feuer

How did the concept behind the whole Post Punk Junk festival come together? How long did it take to track down most of these films?
Bret: At the Cinefamily, our Thursday nights are set aside for music-related films, and punk/post-punk was simply a subject that we had yet to cover. Funny enough, it was punk films that first really got me into the music, instead of the other way around. Concert films like “Urgh! A Music War”, and compilation tapes of old TV shows like “New Wave Theater” really set me off on the right path, as far as my music tastes go — they were my ultimate mixtape.To our knowledge, no other revival cinema in L.A. has done the full-on punk film retrospective treatment (at this point, you’d think that MOCA would’ve tackled it, at least.) You’d see it pop up in bits and pieces, but never in a concentrated way, and never with as much enthusiasm. For example, the American Cinematheque did “Urgh! A Music War” about two years ago, and it was truly awesome to see the thing projected twenty feet high, with the PA system cranked — but they showed the 90-minute theatrical version. What we’re doing this time around is showing the same 35mm print they did, but after the film’s over, we’re also screening all the material in the extended home video version that they cut out. We’re bringing an obsessive’s perspective to the material, a record nerd’s mentality — which is what we do anyway with all our other festivals.The films themselves weren’t difficult to find. Most of them were just a single email away. A lot of these filmmakers are still active, and have websites through which you can contact them directly, or have their works placed in underground film libraries through which you can rent them. I got in touch with the Target Video gang initially through their MySpace page! Again, it’s the enthusiasm that rubs off — you tell them how awesome you think their work is, and you tell them what your plans are for the whole fest — and they say “yes”. Simple. You just gotta have the right plans.
Are any of these films premiering at the Cinefamily?
It’s very difficult to tell, but some of them, like the 16mm shorts “Crash ‘N Burn” (on April 16th) and “Debt Begins At Twenty” (on March 26th) are at least having their first L.A. screenings in almost thirty years.
What night would you consider the must see based on rarity or pure enjoyment?
I’m biased, of course, since my favorite band in the world is The Fall — so the night I’m most shitting myself over is the “Two Films About The Fall” program, where we’re showing the recent BBC documentary covering the band, as well as a vintage ’80s doc called “Hail The New Puritan”, which covers ballet dancer Michael Clarke and his wacko collaborations with The Fall and other bands. In terms of rarity and enjoyment colliding, I’d have to go with the Target Video tribute night, where Target founder Joe Rees is gonna dust off footage that he himself hasn’t viewed in ages, some even transferred from ancient reel-to-reel videotape. I specifically asked him to gather stuff of bands on his master list that even I myself hadn’t heard of, so I know it’s gonna be a killer show for the thrill of discovery alone!
Do any of the films or clips expose the Los Angeles punk scene or is it primarily New York and U.K?
In the end, the fest ended up U.K.-centric, but that’s a reflection of the larger number of well-made films on the subject to come out of that part of the world. Also, with this fest, I consciously avoided a few American films which I thought were “usual suspects”, films I know everyone who’s interested in the topic has already seen. Also-also, since we’re getting such a great response to this fest, I can easily see us doing another one next year with a totally different line-up.
Can you give us any hints to what kinds of “rare nuggets” will be screened on Target Video Tribute Night as well as the Post Punk Junk Mix Night?
The Target night, ultimately, is in the hands of Joe Rees, so I can’t say for sure about that night, but Tom Fitzgerald, one of my co-programmers, has lined up a total wet dream session of rarities for the mix night, including clips from the Irish doc “Shellshock Rock” (covering the Belfast scene), films from the Neue Deustche Welle (German New Wave) scene, live footage of the Suburban Lawns (one of our favorite old L.A. bands), and the Japanese post-punk band P-Model playing live on what appears to be the set of a Far East version of The Gong Show!

POST PUNK JUNK WITH THE PUNK ROCK MOVIE MAR. 5, TWO FILMS ABOUT THE FALL MAR. 12, MADE IN SHEFFIELD MAR. 19, URGH! A MUSIC WAR MAR. 26, POST PUNK JUNK MIX NIGHT APR. 2, AND MORE AT CINEFAMILY, 611 N FAIRFAX AVENUE, LOS ANGELES. 8 PM / $10 / ALL AGES. CINEFAMILY.ORG.