Punk! Star Wars! Not Punk! Ultra Q give us their Top 5

There’s only five songs on the debut EP from Oakland, California spiky-rock ensemble Ultra Q, but it’s all about the quality before the quantity. On tour in support of We’re Starting To Get Along, the band stopped by AltPress to throw around some of their individual top fives for APTV.

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Ultra Q—vocalist/guitarist Jakob Danger, guitarist Enzo Malaspina, bassist Kevin Judd and drummer Chris Malaspina—originally plied their sonic wares under the name Mt. Eddy. After one album (2017’s Chroma) and one self-titled EP in 2018, they rebranded with the Ultra Q moniker earlier this year. They gave us the lowdown on how that went down, from the obscure Japanese TV show they lifted their name from to how Judd (with some help from his dad) scammed his way into the bass player position.

While visiting us here at AltPress, the band offered up some details about their upcoming plans (the songs they don’t like enough yet to record) and what you can expect from future tracks such as “Dark Green Tea” and “Gummy Burn.” Ultra Q also discussed some of their favorite records both punk (definitely old school with several showings from the great Ian MacKaye) and decidedly non-punk (from forward-thinking hip-hop hero JPEGMAFIA to Radiohead’s OK Computer to um, a live Rush album).

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Space nerds, take note: Danger also shows off a bizarrely amazing Star Wars/NASCAR promotional tee and ranks his best Star Wars t-shirts while also waxing nostalgic about that one time Darth Vader helped promote Taco Bell. While nostalgia is nice to visit, Ultra Q are making some of the coolest, vivid music in the American underground. Fun dudes, great taste, sharp music. Your new favorite band may very well just be a click away.