Bandcamp Friday #FeatureFriday Special

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Bandcamp Friday Special

Manchester meets Berlin.

Hawaii Worms’ debut EP is a sonic treat of post-punk electronic music that has an analogue and organic feel. It feels warm, loose and almost improvised. It doesn’t feel quantized tp death. The synths feel organic, the drum machines feel programmed and at the same time have a played manually, especially on the fills. The bass cuts through as a melodic instrument, very Hooky(take that both ways), but for me it’s the vocals that just make this work.

They feel like Kraftwerk and Joy Division and a slightly subdued Phil Oakey. It’s double good and when I reached the end of the final track, ‘Sand’ I immediately reached for the play button again. Since its release last Friday, it has been the soundtrack to all my driving trips. Get it this Bandcamp Friday and you’ll love it.

Emotionally Raw Trip Hop

I wanted to highlight this album as well. An emotional and raw sledgehammer of an album with creativity and a  fuck you attitude that grips you by the lapels and shakes you to your boots. It’s out on the 4th October, so get that in your diary, ya nerds.

I enjoy music that is different, that paints outside the proverbial lines, but is still great to listen to. One album that gives me a lot of this is definitely Miss Mira’s “Get Hung, Fascist”. The music has a certain “foot-tapping-factor” that makes it incredibly catchy and easy to vibe with. The production in a song can start relatively simple, only to end with vocal harmonies for days and a surprising brass-section.

And if the listener is paying enough attention, they can hear things that are “off”; chords that don’t resolve the way they should, slight tones that sound darker in a bright melody. And then there are the lyrics. Apart from reading like poetry of the more underground kind, they are speaking about relationships, not only in the sense of society or between partners and friends, but also to one’s parents. There is a lot of anxiety, pain and anger expressed here, but also a feeling of defiance and a desire for life.

It’s this contrast between the almost existentialist lyrics and the catchy Alternative Pop sound that finally made me realize: this is Punk, just a kind I had not often heard before. If I have one interpretation of this album as a whole, it’s that the lyrics are used to ask questions about things that are not easy to deal with, while the instrumentation is providing the answers.

What the answers are is certainly up to the listener; however, I get the impression that they want to say that things will be okay. Overall, I enjoyed this album immensely. It sounds good, it made me think, and it has a delicious complexity to it. Also, saxophone, plenty of that too. This is an album that I absolutely can recommend to everyone who likes music that is more than it appears at first glance, yet is still easy to get into.

Florgoth

Updated: October 3, 2025 — 7:07 am

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