In the latest installment of K’s legendary International Pop Underground series, longtime Olympian Joey Casio supplies two songs that further illuminate the lost connections between the manic energy of punk and the body-moving rhythms of electronic dance music. This is truly house punk for punk houses.

“Debtor’s Prism” is propelled by a deep hypnotic bass line that draws from Jamaica as much as it does Detroit. Interlocked with a percolating matrix of percussion, the soapbox from which Casio yelps is a cutting indictment of the mindless logic of capitalism.

The commitment to lyrical content is also reflected in “Artists in Times of War,” which draws its name from a Howard Zinn essay. Initially inspired by seeing military shipments leave from the piers of Olympia for Iraq, and the efforts of his peers to stop them, this song is a call to the creative-minded to use their abilities for a common good. The tempo is urgent and the vocal delivery is snarling. This track takes the futuristic staccato sounds of acid house and presents them as politico-hardcore.


"Mr. Casio [is a] one-man party starting machine." - The Stranger