Excellent new country/psych/rock album from this NNCK-related group featuring Jason Meagher, David Shuford and Dave Nuss. This is as near perfect a slice of mind-fried rural psych yet laid by these guys, with the kinda sharp rhythm section, soaring unison vocals and crunchy period-perfect fuzz guitar previously unheard of this side of The New Tweedy Brothers. There’s also a heavy Dead feel, with some of the studio pyrotechnics of Aoxomoxoa, the roots feel of American Beauty and a nicely dazed fourth-world-is-this-world modal feel. When the passages of ginchy organ tone kick in it sounds classically teenage but there’s a level of smarts to the arrangements and the intellectual heft of the music that situates it firmly in the modern underground milieu, even if it’s a splinter scene that worships the Stalk-Forrest Group, SRC and San Francisco’s Charalatans more than Taj Mahal Travellers and Angus MacLise. Edition of 500 copies.

Edition of 340 copies archival release from NNCK documenting their earliest four-piece incarnation. This is NNCK at their most alien, with the abrasive sound of the classic “Clearing” 7” extended to two sides of abstract metal tones punctured by bursts of acoustic noise and the kind of all-devouring soundfields of AMM circa The Crypt. If you prefer NNCK at their most extraterrestrial and less ethnic/rhythmic focussed then this is a winning blat of early improvisatory refusal and makes a great companion volume to Locust’s At 6AM We Become The Police. Beautifully packaged with hilarious conceptual sleevenotes by Keith Connelly. Chris Morris couldn’t have done a better job. Recommended. 

Massive new limited edition LP on NNCK’s new imprint documenting a series of recordings from this ambitious American/European big band that unites Dave Nuss of The No-Neck Blues Band with Spencer Clark and James Ferraro of The Skaters alongside Jan Anderzen of Kemialliset Ystavat, Jonna from Kuupuu, Stellar Om Source, Mik Quantius from Embryo and Tiitus Petajaniemi and Jari Koho of Uton/Keijo. The whole entourage toured through Europe in the spring of 2007 and this LP collects the best of the jams. Three long tracks and one fragment, including two pieces recorded at VPRO Radio. The sound takes off from the kind of free goof blueprint of The Godz, with a lots of percussion and odd rhythmic dunting while The Skaters work lush keyboard parts and a wall of ululating vocal drone deep into the backdrop. Quantius supplies vocals that are somewhere between Don Van Vliet and Alan Bishop and the whole thing proceeds into this kind of weird ethno-zone where fragmented world rhythms and sounds are twisted to dark, psychotropic ends. But the real gravy is the side long fourth track, the most convincing update of the monochord bass/drum confusion of Skip Spence’s “Grey/Afro” ever improvised in real time, combining sublime vocal highs with a hypnotic bottom end. Highly recommended.