Milemarker

The collective creative genius that is Chicago's Milemarker continues to impress with this 33-minute, six-track follow-up to last year's brilliant Anaesthetic disc. This release finds the band continuing to blaze new trails as the pre-eminent and perhaps only electro-punk band. Their passion for the vanguard synth pop of Kraftwerk and Devo and the atonal, discordant guitar rock of Sonic Youth results in a sound that is a giddy warped fusion of squonking, bleeting Moog synthesisers, slashing guitars and thundering rhythms that seamlessly alternates between novelty pop gems ("Join Our Party") and ten-minute-long "PJ Harvey as Genesis" epic soundscapes (the Steve Albini-produced "Lost the Thoughts But Kept the Skin"). Satanic Versus is another inspired release from a band that keeps getting better.