Ketamines – Line by Line

Ketamines – New Victims

Ketamines – Dig

Fist City – Blow
Moby Dicks – All the Time

Timecopz – Shit City
Fist City – Iggy Pup

From the power pop distinction of Jesse Locke:
Since the dawn of the aughts, Lethbridge music mainstay Paul Lawton and songwriting partner JL Hankey have been cranking out infectious little pop tunes under a variety of aliases (James and The Giant, Coruscant, Light Years and James Leroy). The pitch-shifted vox will turn heads first, yet the duo’s tweaked backdrops include everything from slacker jangle to AM radio breeze, canned crowd sounds to Rapture-ous debauchery (when’s the last time you heard that comparison?). Distinction collects the cream of the crop before the pair’s latest project The Ketamines drops its debut LP on Dead Beat Records, plus 7-inches on HoZac, Southpaw and Odd Box.
James Leroy – Wasting Our Time
James Leroy – Celebration
James Leroy – Nervous

From the nervous sheets of Aaron Levin:
The most realized piece of psy-fi punk shreddery from the camp that put Alberta on the map for fringe aficionados. Burning beyond saturated garage riffery, Get On Your Nerves cauterizes all hemorrhaging power-chord burnitude, thrusting a strychnine hybrid of freejacked harmonies and maximum guitar overdrive straight to the dome. Bask in the crushed pop panoramas bursting through membranes of a nihilist future. Glorious 12″ vinyl LP with a limited clear version. Pass the grippy on the left hand side.
Myelin Sheaths – Half-Wit
Myelin Sheaths – Chemistry Lessons

From the meth municipality of Aaron Levin:
The gnarly, driving pop sinusoids of Lethbridge’s Fist City have finally entombed themselves in one eternal polyvinyl groove. Their catch drips in the ecstatic distortion flowing through the Southern Albertan hotbed, but it’s Hunting You‘s torrid leads and dualic vocals that make them a beacon for all things adjective-punk. Well tuned heads will be plugged into their ardent pop sensibilities and otherworldly weirdness, levitating their grey matter to the next level of pop consciousness; a B-Side burner you’ll be playing in the shower, popping on a two-wheeler, and jamming down main street throwing fists and launching space rockets. Quintessential grippage from the small library of beautiful no-field Canadiana.
Fist City – Debbie Get YR Boa
Fist City – Thalido-my-mother Took the Pill

From the crime sprees of Aaron Levin:
Southern Alberta’s hilly wasteland continues to explode with Fist City’s anamorphosis from the pop spectrum. Their twin-shriek phenomenon bludgeons us with searing, distorted leads, rolling bass lines, and a bewildering catchiness that has become their harmonic core. Fist City’s debut single is a brilliant sortie from the disempowered rurality of Alberta, charging forward into instant hit and pop satisfaction. Limited to 99-copies and available to Wyrd Alberta patrons exclusively, the 7″ will luckily be rereleased owing to an epic pressing flaw on the b-side. Recommended grippage.
Fist City – Queen of the Slugs

Another brilliance piece of post-existence garage-punk from Lethbridge, Alberta, released on the soon-to-be-legendary Mammoth Cave Recordings. label. The Moby Dicks’ debute CDR is liquor-store garage-punk-revival filtered through ashtrays and pissy stair-wells; it’s puzzling, adventurous and full of Paul’s weirdly flavored recording MSG. Who is Paul? On top of being the leading member of now-defunct Endangered Ape and producer for about-to-blow-up The Myelin Sheaths, Paul is the cold glue keeping Lethbridge a veritable force in Canada’s what-the-hell-is-this? landscape. Paul’s recording techniques are paramount in separating The Moby Dicks’ debut form derivative garage-punk. Through the Mammoth Cave studios the songs transcend their late-60s roots and firmly entrench themselves in the whirlwind of hell that is the modern Terminal Boredom palette. Buy the CDR before it’s extinct.
The Moby Dicks – Always Be Around
The Moby Dicks – Fuck Off Baby
The Moby Dicks – Talk Money

The Myelin Sheaths were sold out of their CDR after devastating a small crowd during Calgary’s Sled Island music festival. And dammit, my ass is burnt! I never got one and now I want one! When they were ready to record, Martine and Cassandra, founders of Myelin Sheaths, approached Paul from Endangered Ape as the resident Lethbridge recording weirdo. Paul hastily joined the band and took a producing role. The result is a qualitative analysis in pulverizing sci-punk; imagine William Gibson trying to write a biology textbook with a busted Fender drenched in ink. It’s fun, it’s rad, it’s vaguely educational, and it sounds like absolute crud; fragmented distorto-thoughts oozing out of your nervous system in a ridiculous attempt to escape the cavernous spectral-noise that is Paul’s hallmark recording style. Myelin Sheaths will be a big deal whether you like it or not. Look out for an upcoming 7″ on Hozac Records. Lethbridge shreds. Paul shreds. Myelin Sheaths shred. Let’s shred with them.
Myelin Sheaths – Do The Mental Twist
Myelin Sheaths – What’s Yer Diagnosis? (Psychosis)

There is something wyrd happening in Lethbridge (aside from the head-shop my cousin operates) and it’s seeping out from the strange current of cavernous psychedelic punk that is Endangered Ape; powered, mainly, by a bearded fellow named Paul who’s involved (physically or psychically) with a gambit of equally deranged pop-metaphors (Moby Dicks, Myelin Sheaths, Mammoth Cave), all operating in this dubious pocket of civilization skirting the southern border of Canada. Endangered Ape’s second album, ape shall not kill ape, channels a wall-of-spectral-noise into their pre-apocalypse evolutionary-doom-punk to create a hybrid assault of roaring-twang and brain-krud. A singular occurrence in Canada’s what-the-hell-do-I-call-this spectrum. There are rumors that Endangered Ape are breaking up. I hope not. Perhaps a nation of enthusiasm will keep them together? Go get ‘em tiger!
Endangered Ape – Whites Of My Eyes
Endangered Ape – Tales of a Survivalist Horror Pt. 1