FAKE LAST NAME is the autonomous production of RONNI WHAT (SPLLIT). All parts on all tracks are played by them. ANA DA SILVA is a widely beloved musician and visual artist known first as one of the founders and members of THE RAINCOATS as well as her solo career.

Large hole 45 rpm vinyl comes with a heavy archival jacket and an insert featuring original artwork from renowned visual artist LOUISA MINKIN and liner notes by writer ETHAN SWAN who also founded JABS Records.

FAKE LAST NAME is the home-recording alter ego of Ronni What, one half of the Louisiana zolo duo SPLLIT, and while SPLLIT has been increasingly busy and touring relentlessly over the last few years, this new EP marks the first FAKE LAST NAME release since the project debuted with a short-run cassette in 2021. SPLLIT’s restless, kitchen-sink noise bursts have positioned them as something like the RESIDENTS for the egg-punk generation, and although FAKE LAST NAME draws from many of the same cracked-up impulses, Ronni ultimately reassembles them into something much more coolly disaffected while working solo. The A-side kicks straight into “Three Persuasion Domains,” centering blasé, perfectly over-it vocals (think Su Tissue or Lizzy Mercier Descloux at their most detached) which function as carefully structured lines for strangled no wave guitar and clattering drums to cross in impulsive strokes of color, only for the whole affair to be détourned as “Another Persuasion” on the B-side, with Ana da Silva of the RAINCOATS(!) applying spacious dub echo and glitchy electro accents to smooth out some of the more anxious edges of the original source material. The percussion/electronics-driven warble and deadpan, surrealist spoken word of “Gadfly” is equally great and almost ALGEBRA SUICIDE-like, very deserving of the second life that it’s been given here after first appearing on that earlier FAKE LAST NAME tape. Buy the physical record; the visuals and writing included in the packaging/insert are a crucial part of the FAKE LAST NAME experience—keeping the “art” in art-punk.  — Maximum Rocknroll