Ace Fu Records

Eric Speck founded Ace Fu in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1997, naming it after a 336-pound Japanese Hollywood stunt man who was fluent in 13 languages. The label's outstanding catalogue includes All Scars, Chisel, The Fucking Champs, the Heartworms, Pinback, Tight Bros from Way Back When, and plenty more. Ace Fu is good for you.

Ex Models
This Brooklyn quartet is a study in hyperactivity. Hyperactive ideas about semiotics and empty iconography frantically filtered through hyperactive pogo-punk. The Ex Models are an incredible burst of raw, smart energy.

Other Mathematics - 2001


Ted Leo/Pharmacists
Former Chisel frontman Ted Leo gets behind the wheel of a new rock band, the Pharmacists, with buddies from the Make Up, Warmers, and Secret Stars. Raw, soulful, and sometimes political punk-inflected rock in the vein of The Jam.

Tej (?) Leo Rx/Pharmacists - 1999
Treble In Trouble - 2000
The Tyranny Of Distance - 2001
Hearts of Oak - 2003


Negativland
Perhaps you only remember Negativland from the U2 fracas of the early '90s, but that was just one episode in a career of brilliantly confrontational "cultural jamming." The veteran Berkeley-based plunderphonics ensemble is contemporary music's most intelligent and subversive band of sonic outlaws.

Keep Left Vol. 1 A Benefit For David Barasamian and Alternative Radio


Pinback
San Diego's Pinback doesn't resort to any wild and unpredictable new tricks, but still writes eccentric, intelligent atmospheric pop that's unlike anything else out there. What else would we expect from such emissaries of offbeat beauty as Rob Crow and Zach Smith, whom we all know and love for their work in groups like Three Mile Pilot, Heavy Vegetable, and Thingy.

Pinback - 1998
Blue Screen Life - 2001


Tarot Bolero
Tarot Bolero plays sweaty, disjointed, runaway cabaret music that variously suggests the music you'd expect to hear at an Off Off Broadway stage show, a creepy saloon, or a Yugoslavian circus. Or something like that. Wild and weird.

Vaudeville Rising - 1998