It's been forever since the last Bandcamp Friday roundup I've done and there have been a whole ton of excellent surf releases. Unfortunately this one lands in the middle of a vacation with little internet or even time availability. But I've got a bit of a window to do something here, so I'm going to highlight as many as I can before my son finishes his nap or this laundry gets done. I'm really going to try to focus on quantity of reviews over quality, though the whole point is that the music itself is all something I'd recommend. Inevitably I won't get to mention everything I'd like to, but this is better than nothing.

I don't even know when the last one of these bandcamp fridays were. I'm just going to start from now and work backwards-ish.

The Manakooras are not what you think they are.

Comprised of Jeremy from The Aqualads, Ted Pilgrim, Brian and Gary from the Intoxicators, Tim from the Reverburritos and others, this is not a surf supergroup. This is an exotica group, and there's even less noticeable surf guitar than on previous releases they've done. Don't approach this like Tikiyaki Five-O, expecting surf covers of exotica, this is exotica enough that the surf musicians are really my only excuse for reviewing it. It helps that it's really good too.

I have some old EPs from The Hang-Ten Hangmen dating back to 2010, playing trashy lo-fi surf with a bit of a dark edge to them. They turned that around with their much more bright and bouncy EP "Destination Saturn", which had some great expensive-sounding production and beach party vibes. They followed that up in 2018 with their LP "This is Boss", which doubled down on the party feeling with big foot-stomping vibes, sax, and keeping guitar tones fairly clean.

The Del-Vipers shot out like a rocket with their debut LP Terror of the Del-Vipers, then carried that momentum onto the more musically diverse EP Cannibal Safari. So you might be a little a little startled by how unstartling this album starts: with with friendly, sweet Shadows-ey guitar. On their second LP, The Del-Vipers have crafted a much more global, expansive sound that does more than just rip... but also still rips.

Well I thought today would be Bandcamp Friday. I typed up this whole article and then checked isitbandcampfriday.com and apparently the next one is in September. It's nice to have a roundup of reviews anyway. Here's some notable stuff to come out since the last one of these I made.

I'm glad I caught this one, as the name doesn't exactly scream surf. I mean, maybe you knew that Mary Ann Hawkins was pioneering surf in the 1930s. Maybe you knew about their two previous EPs (one on 8" vinyl apparently?). I didn't. But there is a surfboard on the cover.

I remember when Northwest surf guardian Thom Head said I needed to listen to this local Seattle band The Delstroyers, and made sure I got a copy of their first EP. I remember hearing it and thinking he wasn't kidding. Since then it's been a lot of fun watching them go on to do bigger things. They released a blast of a debut LP, put out a cool 7" on Hi-Tide, and I've seen them play on two US coasts -- my then-unborn son even started kicking along to a pre-SG101 show, the first time he'd done that to music!

As global as the surf scene is today, I feel like we only get glimpses of what's happening in Japan. You hear about how tiny villages have "Ventures" bands, we know about eleki, Surf Coasters, and from what I hear it's a great place to tour playing surf music -- with all that in mind there must be more than the likes of The El Caminos, The Royal Fingers, Mach Kung Fu, 5.6.7.8's, Toni OK, Rat Holic, The Routes, Lulufin the Woohoo and Switch Trout. After all, those bands are all REALLY GOOD. Where are the mediocre Japanese surf bands?

I haven't done one of these in a while! It's another Bandcamp Friday, where Bandcamp skips its cut of sales and passes them to the artists. It's been a packed April, and full of lesser-known names to boot, so it's a good time for me to get back to sharing my finds. Here's some standout releases that I noticed, and I probably forgot some too. This is only April and early May releases, even though there was some great stuff in March too, and I they're super short since I wrote this whole thing starting at like 9pm Thursday.