Getting jobs in screamo, psychedelia, funk, noise rock, and hip-hop

April 1 will see the release of the sixth studio full-length from the Greyboy Allstars, Get a Job: Music from the Original Broadcast Series Soul Dream, released via the band’s own Knowledge Room Recordings label. The album was tracked live in the studio during their 2021 Soul Dream livestream series on Nugs.net. Songs covered include tracks by Gil Scott-Heron, Gene Ammons, Burt Bacharach, and others. The first single and video for their cover of Mary Jane Hooper’s “I’ve Got Reasons,” is streaming online, and the band plans a 21-date Get A Job tour in support of the collection, kicking off March 9 in North Carolina and wrapping up April 30 in New Orleans. “We keep a running master list of around 70 tunes,” says band keyboardist Robert Walter. “From those, I picked a mixture of tried-and-true live staples, and songs that weren’t always in common rotation. Usually, for gigs, I propose a list, and then the other members edit and tweak it. For the Soul Dream taping, we wanted each episode to have a theme. Two of them focused on originals, and the other two were covers, live favorites, and music that came out on Prestige Records. The tunes on this release are the best of the covers.”

Founded in 2019 and led by singer-guitarist and songwriter Parker Griggs (Radio Moscow), El Perro is a psychedelic funk rock band with a second guitar and percussionist pushing the music into more of a syncopated Latin and funk groove. Members have included former Radio Moscow drummer Lonnie Blanton and bassist Shawn Davis, of Ramona-based Dead Serial Killers. Other players have included guitarist Holland Redd, who also plays with Riley Hawk, son of skateboard star Tony Hawk, in the band Petyr, and he sang and played guitar and keyboards in Salt Lake City’s UFO TV. The band has also featured touring guitarist Jaron Yancey and touring percussionist Tawny Harrington. They released their debut single “Black Days” in August 2021, in advance of their debut album due in a few weeks, Hair Of El Perro. The psychedelic funk rockers have a new single called “Breaking Free.”

The Locust are known for their synth-heavy, distorted sound, and their ever-evolving insect costumes. 2005 saw the Ipecac Recordings/Radio Surgery release of The Locust’s Safety Second, Body Last EP, featuring one 10-minute song split into two tracks, each of which is further dissected into separate movements. The cover art was a piece called “Treatment” by Neil Burke, a member of similar experimental band Men’s Recovery Project. The EP is being re-released for the first time by local Three One G Records on both cassette and vinyl in variant editions, including one with newly commissioned cover artwork. The repress is being produced in two cassette colors as well as five vinyl variants, including one ultra-limited edition featuring multilayered transparent anatomical illustration packaging designed by Bran Black Moon in collaboration with Brain Dead, limited to 150 copies.

Swing Kids were a 1990s hardcore/screamo band known for spoken/screamed vocals and their melodic/chaotic rhythms and song structures featuring the late Eric Allen (Unbroken) and frontman Justin Pearson (The Locust). Soon, Pearson formed a new record label, Three One G, to release music by both Swing Kids and Unbroken. Swing Kids played their last shows with Eric Allen in 1997. He died shortly after they split. A new Swing Kids Anthology collection is being released on limited edition pink vinyl. The 11 tracks represent all of the band’s Three One G label releases, including their self-titled 7-inch EP (four original songs and a cover of Joy Division’s “Warsaw”), a split 10-inch EP originally released with Spanakorzo (which shared band member John Brady), the “El Camino Car Crash” single, and two songs recorded after the death of Eric Allen, an updated version of “Situation on Mars” and a new track titled “Fake Teeth.” For the first time, all of these tracks have been remastered by Brent Asbury and are collected in one physical release.

Michael May — aka Meidai — is a hip-hop MC who launched his label Off Da Wall MusiQ in January 2006. A full-length called Death Before Dishonor was followed by his Legendary album, released in summer 2014 and featuring guest contributions from L.E., Nina Beretta, Young Tk, Nahledge, and Katja Glieson. Next up was Emdotmay, followed by Poetry Musiq. “Legendary was more political based, Emdotmay was personal about my life, and Poetry Musiq is me evolving,” he told the Reader. 2018 saw an EP release, I Scare Myself. The following year, he put out Professionally Unprofessional 2, while a full-length called Rashad came out in February 2020. A new 12-track full-length, Project L.S.D., was recorded from March through October 2020 at local Off Da Wall Studios. Guests include Big June, None Illa, Cashis, and the late Ryan Bowers, who was shot by police during a 2019 suicide attempt and who did kill himself in 2020. November 2021 saw the release of a new EP called Cleared IV Takeoff. A new album called Michael drops April 4.