What do you mean, “loud”?
Hummus Records are taking the new year by the scruff of the neck with two raucous new live albums from their house-bands, Coilguns and Closet Disco Queen.
Taking advantage of a temporary loosening of Covid regulations, Coilguns’ “Live at Soulcrusher” (released 13 January 2023) was recorded in October 2021 at the Soulcrusher Festival in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Starting from May 2022, the band began to distribute a number of tracks from this recording at a rate of one a month. Now, the performance is available in its – almost! – complete form via the usual digital platforms, including, of course, Hummus Records’ online shop and Bandcamp. Also available are strictly limited vinyl and CD editions which – in order to make these formats extra alluring – contain a new track, “Venetian Blinds”, for which everyone else will have to wait until the new, fourth album by the band, scheduled for 2024.
Coilguns describe themselves as “proud standard bearers of the 2.0 DIY scene since 2011”. Putting their money where their mouth was, the band’s founders, Jona Nido and Louis Jucker, formed Hummus Records in order to release their own records, only to find that all their friends, and their friends’ friends, also wanted a piece of the action. Today, Hummus Records, based in La-Chaux-de-Fonds and Neuchatel, is one of the biggest and most enterprising independent labels in Switzerland.
Closet Disco Queen & the Flying Raclettes, Jona Nido’s “other band”, released their own live album on 27 January. Entitled “Le Coulis de l’Eau”, it is the document of a live session the band recorded in an abandoned hydroelectric plant in the hills near Neuchatel. Containing all tracks from their album “Omelette du Fromage” as well as two songs from the EP “Stadium Rock for Punk Bums”, there is also a limited-edition hand cut vinyl version. Closet Disco Queen began as a tongue-in-cheek attempt to launch a “talentless version” of the Mars Volta. The joke has so far led to tours of Russia, China, Australia, and New Zealand, not to mention various trips across Europe, plus two previous EPs and an album.
You can listen to these live albums on Bandcamp:
Closet Disco Queen – Le Coulis de l’Eau
Coilguns – Live at Soulcrusher
