Montreal’s storied scriptures of garage rock sass find its latest disciples with this smirking fuzz-punk trio. “Cling On” lurches to a start amidst raspberry blasts of guitar, Manzarek organ and lock-step drums before settling into the brand of smashed groove you’d hear pumping from the DJ booth at L’esco. “Ma Babby” ups the hook ‘n’ tackle factor even further with a deluge of pedal effects, tempo shifts and howling monkey vox. Stuff this in your stocking and smoke it.

Ditching the saddleback for a deep-dive into sun-soaked desert jammery, Slim’s wasted wycked warble embodies a new, singular harmony. He’s been re-envisioned within a blizzard of smoked-out synthetics and organ-swung arpeggio; a centrifuge of lysergic balladry and kinetic insanity. Timeless burners for the possessed mind. Conjured via Calico Corp., Slim’s exotic new imprint of “unique articles, starkly designed.”

Psychic Handshake digs deep within thee outernet to conjure this 7″ from AIDS Wolf git-hub Alex Moskos. Soaked in a bewildering avant-croonery, “You Paid For It” double-declutches into a ramshackle sinkhole of pinball shreddery, multi-throned oscillators and 8-bit digitalis. This transmigration through polyrhythmic hood jams continue as “Deepwater, PA” devolves into clamouring solos of synthetic marvel. A huge dub-tee-eff from all angles. Grip sic widdit.

Forget about drum ‘n’ bass, this is drum ‘n’ drum. Sexy Merlin (the man on the traps for Foxfire, Mausoleum and White Suede) is a one-man Liquid Liquid, jamming the urban gamelan like it’s his birthday and the sticks are made of glitter. This mad (wizard) hatter freaks the funky beat and leaves witches grinding in the coven. Bold moves from Pleasence and seven inches of high fidelity bamboo bangers.

Excelling at a peculiarly potent bittersweet strain of end-of-the-movie, think-about-your-life-during-the-credits alt-rock, this 7” by Montreal powerhouse duo Solids cements their role as forerunners breathing fresh air into an aging genre. Here, Montreal’s premier production alchemist guru further magnifies their vigorous roar, and polishes the B-side’s neatly discordant harmonics to a glimmer unheard on their previous outing. 500 copies pressed on timely Halloween orange vinyl.

Plodding along the unending hallways and caves of life, we lust for the sedatival inspyrations of happiness slung to the souls, throats and pasts of others. Alex Hungtai stars as Dirty Beaches and has for the past few years laid bare the minimalism that the over-saturated (that’s you!) and inundated generation(s) crave. This new 7” (the haunting “Lone Runner” and a reissue of “Stye Eye”) lets you slink into chicken wire honky-tonk darkness; like reverberated leather, Bakersfield-cum-Nayshville yelps all set to a comfort-drug soundtrack. With two, sometimes three psychedelic tongue-wagging crooners and percussive mutants as accompaniment, it’s time for you to think less, listen more and step out from behind that beautiful shell into the great divide.

Sugary sweet melodies and psych-punk explosions collide, creating a perfect distillation of Nobunny bubblepop and Wicked Awesomes-styled monotoned haunt-rock. You’re immediately drawn into a comforting K-hole, where you’ll ingest a lethal cocktail of melody and hooks that is 2011’s twee-punk single of the year, “Line by Line.” The deceptively sweet opener (Note: The lines they sing about aren’t lines of poetry) is just the start of a slippery slope. Hooks get buried, melodies get blurred and the atmosphere gets murkier as the 7” progresses, bringing a depth and range not normally seen on a debut. It’s time to let these Lethbridge abusers lead you through the Gateway. GRIP.

Ken Lewis’ reverent cover of Cosmic Cars released in 1982, the same year as the original Cybotron 45, proves that people were almost immediately feeling Juan Atkins’ electric ripples just North of the assembly line. Released on Scorpio Records, home of countless dubious disco, boogie rap and dub records with peculiar provenance, Ken’s whip is more deluxe DeLorean than hot Spinner, his cruising spin more Grace Jones than The Normal. Although his version almost mechanically reproduces the original, it feels like a glossy photograph of a photocopy; the recording less raw and in-the-red, the drum machine less biting, the cold-creep synth noises replaced by a cold-sweat guitar riff. Still, Ken’s facsimile evokes a dystopian future, not the super-industrial cyber-sexuality of Cronenberg, but a world of simulacra coated in a vacuous veneer of replicated pleasures, like Ryu Murakami’s depictions of Tokyo. Still this record bumps and burns when played loud, so thumb a ride if you ever see this avant-coupe roll by.

Awake already walking with sideways sliding smiles. Dazed and drooping eyes. Wobbly liquid feet skating slick linoleum under overrun fluorescents. Again, the vaporous grinning at distorted non-beings. Eu-pho-ri-a! Dis-com-bob-u-la-tion… Crisp, murmured half-vocals, fighting with discernible lyrics amid slithering synth stutters, chugging radiophonic radiation, unbalancing new structures. Twin Infinitives broadcasting thru a black hole and out of Bermuda’s Triangle. The invisible route was about to collapse into ectoplasm. It’s only temporarily open every lunar quarter, so they’ve liberally recorded it from both ends. Simultaneously. And mixed it. Really well. Plunderfuckingphonics well. Double dip this 7″ with the new Fluorescent Friends tape, THAMES VOL XIV, n’ y’ can’t miss. They’re quite the pair. So are the two musicians here, Blake Hargreaves (Dreamcatcher, Clinton Machine, Cousins of Reggae) and Alexander Moskos (AIDS Wolf, Drainolith, Medicine Rocks), both keeping raw noise and electronics heads imploding since 2005, touring and collaborating all over our continent. Now they’re getting weirder. Way weirder. First wax yet for the tape-heads, courtesy of American Tapes mogul / Wolf Eyes retina John Olson. Only 200, so run don’t walk, you adventurous types.

To quote the press release, this single is “an homage to the Vancouver punk scene circa 2007-2010… i.e. a post-30 interpretation of Nu Sensae/B-Lines/Chris-a-riffic… an allegiance to the Nanaimo 4-track scene and Lethbridge garage.” The new wave of adjective-punk has arrived folks — post-adjective-punk, or perhaps more fittingly, subjectivity-punk; the end result of talented individuals swimming in the ocean of access, filtering music like baleen whales filter krill. Success in this new musical epoch will require talented people (people like Apollo Ghost’s Adrian Teacher) to actually do something creative with all of this excess. It’s not even December and I will already declare this the best 7” to come out in 2011. Impossibly good musics.