Top releases, 2008:

For those who haven't yet been able to get hold of a hard copy of the fourth fanzine, here's the list of The New Thing's Top 20 releases of 2008. Singles, EPs, and albums are all counted together in this Festive Twenty to create a definitive picture of the year's highlights. Or so we think.

1. Factory Floor - Bipolar (S)


2. KASMs - Taxidermy (S)


3. Electricity In Our Homes - We Thought It Was But It Wasn't (S)


4. Ulterior - 15 (EP)


5. Hatcham Social - So So Happy Making (S)


6. These New Puritans - Beat Pyramid (LP)
7. Ipso Facto - Six and Three Quarters (S)
8. These New Puritans - Elvis (S)
9. An Experiment On A Bird In The Air Pump - These Sins (EP)
10. Factory Floor - Planning Application (EP)
11. S.C.U.M - Visions Arise (S)
12. 1000 Robota - Hamburg Brennt (EP)
13. Neils Children - I'm Ill (S)
14. The Ruling Class - Flowers (S)
15. The Horrors / Suicide / Nik Void - Shadazz (EP)
16. ddd - ddd (EP)
17. O Children / S.C.U.M - Ace Breasts / Smile (EP)
18. Project:Komakino - Project:Komakino (EP)
19. Plug - Fresh Pleasures (S)
20. Disconcerts - Human Figure In Motion (S)

ESG and A Certain Ratio for 1/1.

One Of One, the record label and promotion franchise run by Electricity In Our Home's Bonnie Carr, has announced details of their second London event. ON02 will bring ESG, the pioneering New York punk-funk group whose liquid basslines have backed not only their own songs but innumberable samplers' too, to the Barbican Centre. Support will come from none other than A Certain Ratio, Manchester post-punk icons, who played several shows with ESG in the early 1980s. It's all scheduled for March 3rd 2009, and tickets and information are available from the Barbican website.

KASMs album & new single.

KASMs have finished recording their debut album at Abbey Road studios, and are to release it some time in the next few months (although as yet it has no name and no artwork). Before that, though, comes their next single, 'Bone You'. It can be heard on their MySpace page and brings an ultra-distorted industrial edge to their sound, while preserving the band's gift for combining melody and structure with bone-crunching vicious noise.