L.A. WITCH
“L.A. Witch knows how to conjure up the demons in pop. Although the band is only a few years old, one root stretches into the sounds of ‘60s garage musicians like The Pleasure Seekers and Sonics while the other digs around in Dead Moon and The Breeders.
Their music is raw and bloody, echoing of bad decisions through a thick, smoky haze of reverb. Just like their influences, L.A. Witch preaches the blues; these aren’t happy ballads, but if you submerse yourself in them, you come out feeling a hell of a lot better than before.” – Mat Weir, Good Times Weekly
Death Valley Girls
Think of Death Valley Girls as an acid-tripping science experiment
that’s been buried alive, and resurrected as a sexually liberated
dystopian chain-gang. A cosmic scar, if you will, on the hills of Echo
Park, where the experiment began in 2014 by proto-punk Bonnie
Bloomgarden and guitarist Larry Schemel — who got lost in the desert,
returned to their haunted garage in Echo Park, and pieced together
their vision with shopworn images of sexploitation babes, a
blood-soaked Iggy Pop, and Bloomgarden’s series of phantasms, the
result of spending a year in a mental institution, where she planned
her neon-glowing odyssey by listening to Black Sabbath and UFO,
reading about alien conspiracy theories, and deriving her band’s moral
compass from a line she saw in a movie:
“Everybody’s gotta be in a gang,” from campy sexploitation romp
Switchblade Sisters (1975). L.A. Weekly referred to them as the city’s
unofficial proto-metal boogie band. That was in 2014-15, when their
debut Street Venom resurrected the bygone spirit of sleazy rock and
roll based on urban ills, tabloid nudes, dangerous sex, and the next
generation of girls gangs.
Bonnie Bloomgarden once belonged to New York rock band The Witnesses,
who emerged from the early 2000s scene made famous by The Strokes.
They had a record produced by Tommy Ramone. They lived on a farm for
most of that time.
Their drummer is a doe-eyed blonde with a mean streak, a derby girl
and cult femme fatale, known simply as “The Kid,” Bloomgarden’s ace.
Bassist Nikki Pickle, unearthed in the Arizona desert, recently joined
the gang after they recorded their second full-length album Glow in
the Dark, which includes guest appearances by Jessie Jones (ex-Feeding
People) Bobby May (ex-Gap Dream) and Laena Geronimo of Feels; an album
influenced by Bloomgarden’s conspiracy theories and mummy sightings in
Echo Park, but mostly it’s their master plan to rev-up their
collective, The Cosmic Underground, how they hope to bring together
likeminded maniacs under one umbrella of dopey happiness and the
glammed-up punkness of Rodney’s English Disco.
DVG are are time-traveling doms, you dig?
The new album, “Glow In The Dark”, came out June 10, 2016 on Burger Records!!
“Like the twinkle in the eye of a cult leader, there’s something
glamorous about Death Valley Girls. Wangarden’s voice is feral yet
feminine, as though it’s coming from the decapitated head of of a
valley girl on her way to see Zeppelin”- Noisey
Jock Gang
With a vibe that calls back to Velvet Underground while pushing forward into detached post-punk territory, Jock Gang have a grasp on both noise and pop, favoring the former but a glimmer of the latter goes a long way. The record is dark and experimental, a seamless blend of the band’s old and new songs. -posttrash.com
