Purple Vu #0002 (May 10, 2026)

Here’s a freebie. Lots beneath for paid subscribers. Get in there!

BIKINI MUTANTS Let’s Mutate LP (1983, self-released tape; r. 2026, Sealed) 

(reposted from Heathen D)

Hard to fathom how every last stone of essential postpunk hasn’t been dug up and repackaged yet, but there’s always one every year that stops you in your tracks, and this looks to be the one for 2026. Bikini Mutants hailed from Somerset in the west of England, had anarcho bonafides alongside The Mob, and played the music in their heads, a bleached-black, disparate and determined mix of high register vocals, scratchy guitar, ESG style beats and a bass player roaming mod-mad meets Pere Ubu all over the fretboard. No surprise, then, that it’s Deb Googe, who’d soon join up with My Bloody Valentine and become the stealth heartbeat propping up all that noise. Listen to her doing scales on the opener “Arcadia” as part of this bony formula creates a disorientation that this music rarely afforded in the pop registers where they reside, and that stays a factor throughout – when I said disparate up there, I’m referring to how far out on their own each member of this band seems to be from their styles of performing, and how exciting it is to watch them daredevil land track after track. Let’s Mutate combines their two cassette demos and collects as much info in its booklet about the band and their scene as we can get. Tracks like “Finale” get up to a near death rock sorta speedy nihilism, to where they start to sound like the Marine Girls throwing a toaster into their bathwater, while the pensive “Question,” with top of the neck notes matching the guitar scuzz over top, aims to predate MBV’s early days by a tiny bit. They start to head to a place with the later stuff that’s a little more dub informed and darker, but everything that worked on the earlier stuff is clearly moving into another gear.

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