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Zaimph
Live Hasselt
Heavy Blossom
CD-R
£7.99
Limited edition of 100 copies documenting a live solo show from Marcia Bassett that took place 6/6/06 in Hasselt. 28 minutes of thick, frozen air, slow brain-bloating highs, and thunderous ecstasy peaks. One of the darkest/densest blats from Marcia to date and highly recommended. Comes in wraparound colour pro-printed sleeves.
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Zaimph
Sexual Infinity
Hospital Productions HOS-162
CD
£9.99
New solo album (first ever 'real' CD release after a bunch of limited CD-Rs) from Marcia Bassett of Double Leopards/Hototogisu/GHQ et al, released on Domink Fernow of Prurient's label. A real departure from her last few releases, Sexual Infinity has a darker, almost documentary-style atmosphere, with the low malevolent hum of late night, neon-illuminated streets (a hint of William Bennett's Bradford Red Light District in some of the more nocturnal 'field' style passages) cut up with the roar of jet engines, seedy, auraless orbits of cracked drone-tone, lurching blown-out synth violence that could almost be a field-recording of the aftermath of a Suicide riot and the most evocatively placed globes of murky drone. All held together with almost Haino-esque stabs of epic repeat chord runs. Highly recommended.
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Marcia Bassett/Carlos Giffoni
Organized Anatomy
Blossoming Noise BN-38
CD
£9.99
Heavy collaborative album in an edition of 300 copies from Marcia Bassett (GHQ/Zaimph/Hototogisu et al) and Carlos Giffoni. Bassett feels like the dominant voice here, rolling out wave after wave of crushing tonal feedback and huge rushes of iron-clad chords while Giffoni stacks perilous accumulations of rotor tones, analog drones and monolithic electricity.
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Zaimph
Death Blooming Pleasure
No Fun No Cat
LP
£14.99
“When spinning this dark velvet cloak a door opens to clouds of smoke shooting out the windows sills of the shell of old library like ink plumes while smokes leaps like black cats between the curtains. Stone and concrete crumble and fill the air with gray gas showering the maze of shrubs in the courtyard with a dark veil of soot. Marcia Bassett has tread the waters of noise psych drone and continues to defy the categories. A dark psychedelic guitar wash peaks its head out of the smoldering coals that could have been released on the mighty slaughter productions death industrial temple from Italy. Further morbidity croaks from the slicing vocals of a distraught entity being ripped from one dimension to the other... and rather enjoying her ordeal. Light the candles and burn the incense....Limited to 300 copies.” – NFP. Already sold out at source.
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Hototogisu
Green
Heavy Blossom
CD
£7.99
The first ever release from the Hototogisu duo of Matthew Bower (Skullflower/Total/Sunroof) and Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards) that even approaches being ‘generally available', Green is a real CD - not a CD-R - pressed up for the group by the sainted Ed Hardy of Eclipse records and available in an edition of 1000 copies complete with a suave full-colour booklet reproducing a bunch of the duo's art. Anyone whose mind was blown by the vision of this pair powering their way through one of the most magical/unforgiving sets of Subcurrent 2005 will find plenty to drown in here. Tracks are shorter than on previous releases, though even more obsessively detailed. There are points where the cacophony is so insanely oversaturated that the noise starts to sound as if it's spontaneously giving birth to language: you start hallucinating words and sentences, almost as if the film protecting you from a constant bombardment of information-heavy environmental radiation has been blown apart. Green also features some of Hototogisu's most straight-ahead death/doom metal moves. Although they're not quite Skullflower, the first track features snatches of classic death metal riffs alongside the stomach-punch of a cheap drum machine and on their theme song, the beautifully ferocious “Heavy Blossom”, Mick Flower of Vibracathedral Orchestra plays drums. Alongside all the iron first action, there are some beautiful moments where Marcia and Matthew's voices melt into ribbons of pure white light and the whole thing floats to the ceiling. A modern classic, and possibly the best Hototogisu album to date. Highest recommendation.
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Hototogisu
Chimarendammerung
De Stijl No Cat
CD
£8.99
Brand new full-length recording from the duo of Matthew Bower (Skullflower/Total/Sunroof et al) and Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards/Zaimph/GHQ) features a more rock-reverent take on the kind of vertical screens of impossibly detailed overtone that defined their earlier albums, with Marcia's viola slow-burning fluttering afterimages of neon spirals deep into the air while Bower's guitar/microphone worship generates repeat-ascensions of overloaded ecstasy tone. Something grittier, more immediately tactile, that makes this their most dramatically meat-based orbit of hallucinated space/time vectors to date. Highly recommended.
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Marcia Bassett
Dark Crystals Splinter Before My Eyes
Glass Eye Books No Cat
Art Book
£7.99
Edition of 100 copies art book presenting colour reproductions of six of Marcia Bassett’s (GHQ/Zaimph/Hototogisu) psychedelic paint/collage works, running from Rorschach forests peopled by huge kittens through weird crystal geometries and distressed anatomy. Stapled card booklet.
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Zaimph
Coast To Coast
Gift Tapes GT-024
Cassette
£6.99
New set of solo electric guitar recordings from Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards/GHQ/Hototogisu et al). Tectonic string work that has the weight of planets, with high, eerie melodies threaded through massive baseline drones. Aspects of Keiji Haino, Charalambides and Electronic Meditation-era Tangerine Dream make this a particularly explosive set. On Brother Raven’s label, hand-numbered edition of 200 copies.
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Marcia Bassett & Margardia Garcia
The Well
Headlights IPH-14
LP
£21.99
Hand-numbered edition of 200 copies LP on Manuel Mota’s private Headlights imprint documenting a heavyweight duo set from Marcia Bassett of Zaimph, Hototogisu, Double Leopards, GHQ et al and improvising Portuguese bassist and guitarist Margardia Garcia. Garcia is one of the major new generation European free players, coming out of the same scene as Mota, and she’s just as capable of generating Swans-style Industrial entropy as she is playing explosive fire music. Here Bassett uses keyboard and guitar to create austere arcs of Industrial-strength drone that Garcia anchors with tactile, questing strings, giving the whole thing an odd avant-classical backbone.
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Zashiki-Warashi
Mail Wars
Conduit Creations No Cat
LP
£15.99
Limited edition of 550 LPs from Carter Thornton compiling a few years worth of mail collaborations with players like Burning Star Core, Alan Dubin (Khanate, Gnaw, OLD), Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards, Zaimph), David Shuford (NNCK, Enos Slaughter), Pigeons, Kuwayama Kiyoharu, Marshall Avett (Zandosis), Greg Wildes (Gas Tank Orchestra), Carl Smith / Derek Phelps, Darwin Smith, Smith Harrison and Dr. Mijin Kim. Buncha styles devoured and regurgitated, from scattershot drone explosions and spare percussive strategies through laminal flashes of rainbow electronics. Plus it’s all compiled and programmed in a way that is totally maximalist, giving it the feel of some weird Euro art/rock obscurity in the orbit of Futura/Red et al. Excellent.
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