Burlington, VT based glam/post-punk band PONS are dropping their DIY debut album INTELLECT today, and we’re stoked to invite you to come surfing with their twisted sounds and multi-style arrangements that seem to float above conventional ideas about indie music.
INTELLECT is a primal, angular, and noisy album that sees Pons honing in on their idiosyncratic brand of dancy, in-your-face punk.
“Our debut album comes after the release of three EPs: They Look Like People, Being The Prey, and Dread, respectively.” – comments the band.
With its extremely wide range of influences, INTELLECT bridges the gap between the abrasive minimalism of groups like Suicide and the in-the-pocket, aggressive grooves of new wave and post-punk music. The album’s cryptic lyricism revolves around paranoia, being suffocated by consumerism, getting lost at sea, and much more.
INTELLECT is out today on the newly formed, Pons-run label STICK N’ MOVE RECORDS.
INTELLECT is the debut Pons album, which comes after the release of three EPs: They Look Like People, Being The Prey, and Dread, respectively. The idea for INTELLECT was conceived during the summer of 2019 around the time Pons was hitting the road to support Dread. Pons consisted of Sam Cameron and Jack Parker at the time, as Sebastien Carnot had yet to join the band. INTELLECT is an album all about the brain.
The album is centered around themes of external stress, such as technology and the omnipresent shadow of consumerism, as well as coping with internal struggles like paranoia, temptation, and the fear of being lost at sea (metaphorically and literally). Influenced by artists such as The Stooges, Suicide, David Bowie, and Death Grips, we set out to make our most noisy, primitive, and percussive release yet. The full realization of the angular and dancy direction we wanted to take this album in was made possible through the addition of percussionist and entertainment-extraordinaire Sebastien Carnot. Like the album art suggests, INTELLECT is the sound of your brain being totally pitted against you. It’s a reflection of the toll that constant overstimulation and exposure to technology can have on an individual in the 21st century.
A more comprehensive biography on Pons and more information, including live videos can be found below.
INTELLECT was written, recorded, and produced by Pons. Cam Barnes, a Burlington, Vermont based rapper, plays saxophone on the record.
Pons was formed in the summer of 2018 in North Carolina by longtime friends and collaborators Sam Cameron and Jack Parker.
The first Pons EP, They Look Like People, was an experimental and psychedelic combination of manic punk music and lush, synth-driven soundscapes.
Pons quickly followed their debut EP with 2019’s Being The Prey and Dread, two EPs that saw the band moving in a more angular, dancy, and post-punk direction while maintaining the freewheeling, experimental philosophy that the band was founded on.
After a successful US tour supporting Dread and relocating to Burlington, Vermont in the summer of 2019, Pons added second drummer Sebastien Carnot to the lineup, which further pushed the band down the angular and in-the-pocket road they were already traveling on.
Pons spent 2019 and the beginning of 2020 relentlessly touring throughout the northeast United States and Canada and made a name for themselves with their unhinged, often dangerous performances and involvement in radical politics. At one of these highly theatrical shows, one could expect to see Pons clad in extremely formal, business-like attire, athletic equipment, animal masks, or all of the above.
And, if you didn’t see a member of Pons getting violently tossed through the crowd at some point during the show, you probably weren’t paying attention.
These boundary pushing performances culminated with January’s BIG TOP, an extravaganza at Vermont’s largest venue that combined Pons‘ set with professional circus theatrics.
“Our singles ‘Jimmy Two-Time’ and ‘NO SQUID’ have also been hyped up by Nardwuar and put on regular rotation over at his radio show.” – adds the band.
Asked about their local scene and music community in Vermont, the band offered the following:
“Even though we’re from Burlington, Vermont, Keeper Records in New Jersey and the bands that they have signed are definitely worth a check! Keeper is doing a run of INTELLECT cassettes and we frequently play with a band called Shinner that they have signed. Much love for the whole operation. Also, shoutout to the Burlington basement scene!
Here are some bands that we play with/personally love!”
Burlington, Vermont: Greaseface:
New Jersey: Shinner, Jug & the Bugs
North Carolina: The Rocky River Nightmare Band, Uncle Kurtis, Fortezza
NYC: Nega Bomb, Griffy Jones
Watch the live performance of “The Hypnotist”, a dancy post-punk track about using drugs as a means of escaping one’s current situation and feeling like you’re constantly screaming into the void of the internet.
The Hypnotist lyrics:
Take me down
To the hypnotist
I got a way to hit it
Do it for the feeling
Take me down
To the hypnotist
I can’t live without it
Knowing I’m surrounded
Paper dreams, making me scared
Enter my trip and I’m starting to slip
Sky’s got me down, on the way side
Turning around, where’s my eyesightTake me down
To the hypnotist
I got a way to hit it
Do it for the feeling
Take me down
To the hypnotist
I can’t live without it
Knowing I’m surrounded
Colors in eyes, and I’m losing my grip
Fear in my voice when i start to rip
Don’t get to close, I’m feeling manic
Everyone around me is in panicStay, I’m feeling Hemingway, want some of that you say, can’t take your eyes off of the computer display and
play to roll the game, I’m betting on the same, I’m betting on the fact that you won’t ever get a name,
invisibility, you know you won’t see me, you’re hiding from yourself but you know I’m about to freak
bird that had the beak, bird the wasn’t weak, bird that tried to speak but you won’t ever get a name
More videos from the band’s appearance at BIG TOP:
