With over thirty releases under their name, Self Defense Family continues to become increasingly more like an actual extended family. The band maintains its revolving-door policy of members, with a consistent group of players at its core and a larger collection of musicians filtering in and out based on availability and need. This collective-like format allows for the band’s productive output to go on unhindered and seemingly without end. As the group expands and shifts, with its individual personas diverging as well, the Family acts as a constant for its members, a place to return to and work towards a collective musical effort. Their latest full-length, Have You Considered Punk Music, finds the group at their decidedly most self-reflective, taking on popular mythologies and personal narratives from a lifetime in music as the album’s overarching themes. For this release, the band gathered in a Brooklyn studio over the course of a week, working together with engineer Taylor Young, perhaps best known for his work with metal bands. Following their usual process-based mode of writing and recording almost simultaneously, the resulting LP features an array of songs that feel tightly composed while maintaining the loose, spirited air of improvisational music. With ten songs that reflect the diverse musical interests of its members and their mutual affinity for repetitive post-punk, psychedelic rock, and various film scores, Have You Considered Punk Music documents a band further refining their own particular invention.
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