PNKSLM Rock & Indie 12 Items

7ebra is the project of 25-year-old twin sisters Inez and Ella from Malmö, who grew up playing music together. Inez plays electric guitar and sings, Ella plays a keyboard, organ and Mellotron - whilst manually playing drum samples with her feet - as they both sing haunting harmonies in a way that only twins can. Beautiful but punk, minimalist but epic. The duo are making big waves already, having toured with Future Islands and The Dandy Warhols as well as slots at festivals such as Sxsw, Eurosonic and The Great Escape. On the debut album Bird Hour, they effortlessly combine their own brand of minimalist indie rock hooks with the unique production stylings of Tore Johansson, known for his work on Franz Ferdinand’s debut album and The Cardigans. The album is out via Pnkslm Recordings (ShitKid, Les Big Byrd etc.) and the band will tour extensively during 2023.

Arre! Arre! is the Swedish punk band that during the last decade have won multiple awards, been booked to festivals such as Roskilde & Sxsw and have gotten hand-picked to open for hardcore legends Refused. On their new LP, the band have maintained their core inspiration from the 90s Riot Grrrl scene, while at the same time broadening their sound to include a wider range of influences - from post-punk and 60’s ballads, to James Brown, to the Spice Girls.

As usual, the album has a strong underlying theme throughout - this time of motorbikes and female biker gangs, with the band even going to the extreme of recording local bikers driving around the car park of the Studio Sickan to sample within the tracks. Combined with the other new production quirks such as ABBA-inspired choirs and galloping percussion, “We Ride The Universe” has turned into a markedly cohesive and unique album for the band, sure to impress fans both new and old. The album is out on Pnkslm Recordings (ShitKid, Les Big Byrd etc.).

The solo project of Malmö songwriter Katja Nielsen, of acclaimed punk combo Arre! Arre!, is finally ready to unleash her debut LP 'Violent Tendencies', a ten-track deep dive into the stories of female murderers. Expertly produced, Violent Tendencies, takes its cues from '60s garage rock and girl groups rather than the eighties infused goth pop of her early EP's, looking outward rather than inward for a rollercoaster that veers between a glut of different genres, themes and lyrical ideas, although still scored through with Nielsen's sharp ear for melody.

The British-Brazilian duo Cherry Pickles return with their second full-length The Juice That's Worth The Squeeze, out October 23 on the Swedish indie label Pnkslm Recordings (ShitKid, Hollow Ship, Chemtrails etc). Following on from last year's break-through debut album, the Birmingham based duo quickly set to work on the follow-up, offering up another set of disjointed and delicious tracks that ranges from noisy garage rock in the vein of the Oblivians to something more akin to the much-missed surfy indie rock of Girls.

These two vicious bastards (Black Mekon and his brother Black Mekon) were named after the legendary Black Mekong, illegitimate children of prostitutes visited by missionary preachers, abandoned to fend for themselves on the banks of The Mekong River. Their mobile church of jet-engine noise and pelvis-shattering drums has graced shores all over Europe, Japan, South America and the USA both headlining and at the personal request of Jon Spencer, Guitar Wolf, The Scientists, Kid Congo, King Brothers and more.

Over almost 15 years Black Mekon and his brother Black Mekon have put together a healthy back catalogue and while their most recent recordings have included their friends and family joining them, their latest effort THE Lumpiness OF Demand is a quick detour right back the start, recorded fast and live as a two-piece with all the consideration and skill of a flaming, wingless jet engine heading for the mountain.