New honey-thick stew of electronics, phased vocals, long lines of human breath and strings tuned to the heavens from this always electrifying Finnish margin-walker, here joined by members of Vapaa. Limited.

One single track from Finnish folk-spirit Keijo and friends that combines oscillating/phased electronics with minimal bells and singings strings to birth a weird retro-futurist cave-space. Comes in a full-colour oversized wallet with sprayed discs in an edition of 150 copies.

Massive limited edition LP on NNCK’s 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.

CD packaged in a 7” sleeve from Finnish folk spirit Keijo with a set featuring his idiosyncratic,  psychedelic take on traditional blues, Woody Guthrie ballads etc: “Keijo's songs draw from country-blues sources, as is often the case with his releases, there's a couple of Woody Guthrie interpretations included here. Harmonicas whine and woe, but also keep up the rhythm of keepin' on. In these songs, people get up early and travel in a land "that used to be your land." It's a place where luck comes and goes, just like the people that you meet. The girl knows how to hit you like rolling thunder, the workers are left unpaid (the boss ain't), the ones with no work are standing in the welfare line, your "true love" throws you a suitcase and shows you the door, there's working in the country and in the cities, an anonymous wanderer carries the blues wherever he goes - but it's bigger than just being down: you don't see me worrying, 'cos I've got nothing left to lose. That's why we all share the blues.” – Ikuisuus.

Limited edition CD-R run of what was originally a cassette-only release from this new project launched by Spencer Clark of The Skaters/Vodka Soap et al. This is an intense non-stop hypno-ritual that combines flashes of circular keyboard motion, huffing, hyper-ventilating vocals, almost Terry Riley/The Gift style narcotic minimalist architectures and an endlessly deep, brain-dazzling atmosphere that is pure smoke and mirrors. No matter how many players bite Spencer Clark and James Ferraro's collective ass, there is still no one who sounds remotely like them. So welcome to Pacific City. Recommended.

Fantastic limited edition vinyl pressing of what was originally a limited self-released CD-R from this sci-fi synth project of James Ferraro of The Skaters et al, with 1980s minimal wave moves bisected by the kinda keyboard patterns you might've found on an Edgar Froese solo album or post-Body Love Klaus Schulze and exploded with barbarous invocations, syruped-vocals and some black drone atmospherics. Or, as the cover art suggests, urban landscapes as visioned by showroom dummies illuminated under 3 am neon. This is a fantastic LP with a look and feel of the most cracked weirdo private press release. Completely re-mastered and with a bonus unreleased track. Super desirable, edition of 425 copies and long out of print. Highly recommended.

New limited edition album from James Ferraro’s magick partner Labanna Bly aka P.A.R.A., on Ferraro’s own New Age Discs. Whereas James’s power-visions are drawn from irradiated post-Terminator arcade game imagery and trashy 1980s mainstream culture given powerful alchemical treatments, P.A.R.A.s work is sourced more in established occult practice, with polymorphic goddess identities channeled via intense vocal excitations and primitive mantras. This is the most overtly ritualistic of her new releases, starting with an evocation of elemental female power via the chanting of Goddess names before dissolving into bell tones, haunting vocal cries and wiped-out tape drone. Highly recommended.

New pro-printed/pro-burned limited to only 150 copies album from James Ferraro. Feed Me is set in a world where slimers feed on the dark sexual energies of the pick-up underworld and the endlessly modified bodies of transgendered strippers function as a metaphor for the immanentizing of the eschaton. Or is it just Ghostbusters with the horn?  Either way, Feed Me features some of his most fully formed ‘songs’ with a euphoric teenage appeal, vocals that sound like a 1980s children’s choir, and thick beams of guitar and keyboard melodies. It’s all cut-up with the kind of musclehead/slimer commentary that runs through much of Ferraro’s back catalogue, perfectly balanced between dystopian critique and utopian celebration. Titles include ‘My Parents Think I’m Turning Into A Cockroach’, ‘TV Dinner Underneath A Full Moon’, ‘Zit T.V. Goes To Hell’ and ‘She’s A Little Hot Pinball Machine’. A major side from James. 12 tracks, 60 minutes.

Deluxe vinyl edition of what was originally a self-released CD-R from James Ferraro complete with reworked and re-recorded material and specially commissioned airbrush artwork. On Air feels like a luminous update of Ferraro’s early Lamborghini Crystal sides, with the atmosphere of a shortwave broadcast from a parallel universe where arpeggiated synths function as transports to a future that feels like a lonely technicolour version of the past. Deep space morse code patterns orbit bursts of triumphal garage band guitar, simple euphoric melodies that feel like the soundtrack to your adolescence are re-imagined as a series of psychedelic instants, smears of DJ voiceovers are beamed straight from Venus... On Air is the perfect trip into Ferraro’s Multitopia. Also features an insane cover version of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” which sits nicely alongside Mama Baer and Kommissar Hjuler’s version.  Titles include ‘Pleiadian Channel Surfer #1’, ‘Remote Control Under The Couch’ and ‘Heaven’s Bathroom’. Recommended. 

New issue of this always excellent music/art/lit/fiction zine headed-up by Mike McGonigal. In the book there’s interviews with Phill Niblock, Roy Montgomery, and Brian Chippendale of Lightning Bolt; an excellent piece on Spencer Clark of The Skaters/Monopoly Child Star Searchers et al; photography by Olivia Wyatt and Megan Holmes; art by Marcellus Hall and Victor Kerlow; a fascinating archival interview w/the great Joe Brainard by Anne Waldman; fiction by Kimberly Parko and R. Foggo; rare May ’68 posters from Grenoble. CD features 78 minutes of music from Snake Hole, Sloppy Heads, Johnita and Joyce Collins, Atole, Gospel Creators, White Rainbow, The Dirashi Tribe, Roy Montgomery, Golden Retriever, Oneida, Phill Niblock, and Happy New Year. 

Stunning dream-team summit from a buncha heavy-hitting synth/drone heads – James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never, Laurel Halo, Samuel Godin and David Borden. Borden is best known for his soundtrack work on The Exorcist as well as his membership of Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company, a new music ensemble that formed in NY in 1969 in order to perform works by Terry Riley, Steve Rich, John Cage etc but that soon developed into one of the first live synth ensembles. Frkyws 7, part of RVNG’s on-going collaborative series, presents five tracks live-channelled by variations of the line-up and it is a goddamn stone: if you can imagine the ultra-sensual slow-mo body sweeps of OPN’s Returnal extended to the point where the biological is confused with the cosmological and the cosmological with the synthetic then you’re approaching the kind of epic, hallucinatory sensuality that the group generate using washes of deep/endless tone and barely stated arcs of synthesized melody. In many ways this might be the most straighforwardly beautiful set of recordings from any of the players, with all of the revelatory power of the 2001 soundtrack re-set for a post Halve Maen/Atem mindset. Indeed, it sits nicely alongside Ferraro’s own Heaven’s Gate as a kind of hi-fi companion to that set’s vision of delivery into the future, with the closing track “Twilight Pacific” as beautiful as anything on his masterpiece Marble Surf. Easily one of the synth/drone records of the year with a majestic vision of the form that would devour and dwarf anything that comes close. Cool paste-on sleeves, comes with a download coupon that also includes a bonus track. CD version imminent. Highly recommended! 

New 120 minute movie from James Ferraro in a run of 500 copies, packaged in a slim DVD slipcase with mock denim effect and last American hero style iconography. Not sure if this is the full-length movie that James was working on during his Hollywood retreat but it’s based in ‘crime-ridden’ Rochester, New York, in the near future and centres on a police officer who is brutally murdered and subsequently recreated as a super-human cyborg. The main plot of the movie revolves around a ‘Bug’ (code word for a member of an alien species that is similar in many ways to a very large cockroach) searching for a miniature galaxy which is also a vast energy source. ‘Acid Eagle’ is the president of Hell-TV (Channel 83, Cable 12) a sleazy television station specialising in sensationalistic programming. Displeased with his station’s current lineup (which mostly consists of softcore pornography), Professor Pizza is on a seemingly endless quest for something that isn’t so ‘soft’ and will ‘break through’ to a new audience. The rescue turns out to be fake; the two climbers are taken prisoner by a group of ruthless thieves. The driver is now a hostage trapped by his own seatbelt. However, the robot becomes smarter and more dangerous as it plays putting the boy and his friends in mortal danger. In addition to being an action film, the movie includes larger themes regarding the media, resurrection, gentrification, corruption and human nature and scavenges scenes from a host of famous and obscure straight-to-video horror, action and sci-fi movies.“Rapture Adrenaline is a virtual videogame car chase through the veins of hyperreality seen through fragments of US movies – mostly produced in the 1990s and diffracted by the euro-lens of Dutch subtitling and French dubbing. To achieve optimal melting these fragments have been transferred from tapes, DVDs and computer files to VHS.” A massively psychedelic/psychotic take on dystopian TV culture and Hollywood hypnotics from its most visionary celebrant/critic, in many ways the ‘ultimate’ expression of his Hypnagogic worldview. In addition the DVD comes with a new feature, Welcome To Candyland, where Ferraro guides us through a walking tour of Hollywood/LA, visiting the site of the OJ Simpson murder etc. Multi-region DVD. 

Led by Jan Anderzen, Kemialliset Ystävät are the most visible of Finland’s sub-operatives and the most consistently rewarding. They work in short, spooling instrumentals, building layers of simple repetitive riffs into laminal mudcakes and weaving ghosts of folk song into huge tunnels of drone. Alkuhärkä is their latest Fonal release, another entry in an already barely-quantifiable back catalogue. This one sees their sound slightly rewired in a bid to further bolster the electronic element, with several tracks evoking the cracked neon skies of David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy as well as the early synth experiments of Asmus Tietchens. But overall the sound is acoustic and communal, albeit occasionally propelled by the kind of tranced rock base that launched previous Scandinavian sound thinkers like International Harvester and Träd Gräs och Stenar straight into space. 18 tracks flit past like landscapes glimpsed from a train: marching band melodies scored for duck calls and bells, huge fields of teleporting percussion, accordion-led music box refrains and heartbreaking almost-songs carried on tides of wordless vocals. Recommended. Limited to 500 copies on 220g vinyl.

New album from the duo of Jan Anderzen (Kemialliset Ystavat) and Jani Hirvonen (Uton) with a heady Godz/ESP freak division feel. Lots of chanting, percussion, woozy use of F/X, Angus MacLise worship…

Fabulous, ass-blasting free jazz set from a buncha Fins with connections to Hetero Skeleton – alto and baritone saxophonist Janne Martinkauppi, alto and tenor saxophonist Sami Pekkola and drummer Petri Pirtila – bolstered by percussionist Jaakko Tolvi from Kemialliset Ystavat and tenor saxophonist Taneli Tuominen of Boris Morgana. The recording has a classic wild-man free jazz feel, with reed-shredding solos of the calibre of Peter Brotzmann and Arthur Doyle cut up with a massively aggressive post-FMP edge and an attack that would reconcile Globe Unity Orchestra with Rauhan Orkesteri. Edition of 300 copies and highly recommended.

OOP 2004 release, limited to 400 copies, from this Finnish behemoth featuring Islaja.

Two new tracks of post-Godz aural confusion and homemade psych from these Finnish nuts that sometimes feature Chris Corsano. On Jan Anderzen of Kemialliset Ystavat’s label. “Two tracks by the Puke Eaters, the A side was originally conceived as a theme for an album dealing with Deihoma, the man who wandered inside "the Worm that ate the world" in order to slay it. Strictly Steen & Rusty, as inept as ever. B side has Rusty involved in the act of synthesizer desecration with some nameless slave. Steen Guru vocals were added later via the method of overdubbing.” - Ralf Normaali

New limited 7” on Jan Anderzen of Kemialliset Ystavat’s own label from this solo female. Tsembla use traditional acoustic and electric instrumentation to create oddly affecting folk/pop miniatures that combine the scrabbly forest-folk sound of Kuupuu, Lau Nau etc with nostalgic keyboards and variously displaced sonics.

Great new album from Jan Anderzen’s Chemical Friends, three years in the making, with a freeform freakout style that could almost be The Familiar Ugly on The Red Krayola’s Parable Of Arable Land. There’s also a newfound ‘song’ quality to many of the tracks, with snatches of melody and hints of vocal arcs that float like Popol Vuh choirs above the flashing electronics, hand-drums and toytown tropicalia. Aspects of Astral Social Club and Monopoly Child Star Searchers combine in weird childlike hymns that could almost pass for a Japanese Ya Ho Wha soundtracking a Hawaiian beach monster movie. Nostalgic, funny, uniquely compelling, with guest appearances from a bunch of key underground players including C. Spencer Yeh, Neil Campbell, Hitoshi Kojo, Pekko Kappi and Niko-Matti Ahti.

Great new album from Jan Anderzen’s Chemical Friends, three years in the making, with a freeform freakout style that could almost be The Familiar Ugly on The Red Krayola’s Parable Of Arable Land. There’s also a newfound ‘song’ quality to many of the tracks, with snatches of melody and hints of vocal arcs that float like Popol Vuh choirs above the flashing electronics, hand-drums and toytown tropicalia. Aspects of Astral Social Club and Monopoly Child Star Searchers combine in weird childlike hymns that could almost pass for a Japanese Ya Ho Wha soundtracking a Hawaiian beach monster movie. Nostalgic, funny, uniquely compelling, with guest appearances from a bunch of key underground players including C. Spencer Yeh, Neil Campbell, Hitoshi Kojo, Pekko Kappi and Niko-Matti Ahti.

New release on Campbell Kneale’s private Don’t Fuck With magic imprint in an edition of only 100 copies: dreamteam collaboration that pits Campbell Kneale’s current vehicle for maximal transmigratory bliss with Jan Anderzen’s Kemialliset Ystavat satellite Tomutonttu. This side is totally spooked, starting off in a weird whispering grass/forest of spirits style that’s somewhere between the great Paivansade LP on Eclipse and the early Keiji Haino compositions on the Soul’s True Love before breaking into a back-and-forth ghost fog-horn exchange that could almost be the titanic specters of Don Dietrich and Jim Sauter straddling the Golden Gate Bridge. This plays out as one long track though it does consist of several separate conceptions and the later pieces mutate into a kind of alien cosmo drone that combines Anderzen’s goofily psychedelic keyboard work with sobbing arcs of choral rainbows, expertly channeled tape work and the sound of punctured speakers broadcasting from Venus. This is hip! Full colour wallets. 

Edition of 300 copies picture disc with art on the flip presenting one of Jan Anderzen’s most psychedelic and hypnotically rocking sides. This self-titled collection, originally commissioned by the Aanen Lumo Festival for New Sounds, starts off like an early Sonic Boom side with fast tremolo guitar and padding motorik rhythms beneath hysterically modulated and extended vocals eventually locking-down into a fantastic eternal groove. But soon the whole thing devolves into what sounds like a chopped and screwed Arkestra tackling “The Satellites Are Spinning”. Obsessively constructed psychedelic electronica, set to stun. Recommended. 

Inspired pairing that pitches a side each from Neil Campbell’s kinetic Industrial trance unit Astral Social Club with Jan Anderzen of Kemialliset Ystavat’s hypnotic toy orchestra Tomutonttu. Campbell’s side has a heavy automating/Nurse With Wound feel to it with Steel Dream Of The Marching men rhythms dissolving in corrosive F/X that feedback all over themselves to the point that it feels like Terry Riley remixing Neu w/an eternal Acid motorik sound. Anderzen’s side is the perfect compliment, extended fluttering drones over helium melodies that feel as if they could have been beamed from the most candy floss areas of James Ferraro’s brain. Edition of 300 copies w/150g colour vinyl, hand-stamped labels and full colour silkscreen sleeves by Alan Sherry of SIWA. 

Edition of 60 copies self-released live album from Finnish communal heads Uton. This one features two complete live shows, from Copenhagen and Berlin in 2008. The sound is wilder and little more pro-Industrial than recent Uton white-outs, with monolithic machine noise, infernal drones and the vibrations of distant factories charging the air with forms and shadows somewhere between Throbbing Gristle and the original Dream Syndicate.

Edition of 60 copies self-released album from Finnish cosmonauts Uton. This one combines distant music box/ethnic melodies with sandpaper coarse shortwave tones, bursts of analogue electricity and some almost Takayanagi-esque feedback/noise constructs.

Edition of 60 copies self-released album from this Finnish ethnic psych/jam outfit. Five tracks that move from screaming automatic-music Fluxus-style instants to protesting post-Conrad/Cale violin noise and psychoactive small instrument trance.

New release for Jani Hirvonen’s one-man Finnish cosmonaut orchestra, a Japan-only release on Sachiko Fukuoka’s (Kousokuya/Overhang Party/Vava Katora) own label. This is one of Uton’s more enigmatic releases, with the sound of nowhere channelled via automating electronics and hovering planetary-scale drones over endless whispering forests of microtonal choirs. Comes in oversize hard card sleeves: “Uton’s music is a mix of many genres, including elements from drone, avant-noise, free-improv, psychedelia, ambient, tape-music, musique concrete etc. Sometimes wondering in the silent dark semi-acoustic mysteries, and in the next day creating noisy wall of sound with outer space echoes and alien atmospheres. Uton's sound is made from many sources; like electric guitar, electronics, voice, different type of percussions (small drums, maracasses), bells, violin, flutes, keyboards... and nowadays also some digital manipulation too. All kind of instruments are welcome to join in, but the result is always coming from the same filter (which we call now with name "Uton")
From The Twilight, Next to Nowhere and Disappeared album was recorded already around 2004-2005 in Tampere, Finland. Recorded with four-track tape recorder, and later edited and mastered digitally on computer. Musically this album shows the most mysterious and atmospheric side of Uton. He has collaborated with Alan Courtis (Reynols), Antony Milton (Mrtyu, Black Boned Angel), Ben Reynolds, Peter Wright, Jari Koho (Vapaa), Maxime Primault (Enfer Boreal, High Wolf) and Jan Anderzen (Tomutonttu, Kemialliset Ystavat) among others.” – MA. 

Long-time coming collaboration between The No-Neck Blues Band and original ethno/jazz Kraut caravan Embryo. Embryo made some great recs in the early 70s, including the super-heavy Bremen 1971 and members of Embryo played alongside Conrad Schnitzler et al at the Zodiak Free Arts Lab and as members of the free-improvising think tank Eruption. Their commitment to guerrilla folk/art actions, their whole get-in-the-van ethos and their multi-disciplinary approach to improvisation makes em ready bed-fellows with NNCK and anyone who has seen that amazing Embryo Eurasian tour documentary will already be fully aware of the parallels. This big band set is heavy on the percussive side, with miniature hand/glock/throat rituals giving way to moments of sublime melodic clarity that have a touch of eastern European klezmer music to em (especially reminiscent of that beautiful Khevrisa set on Folkways) along with a little Marion Brown/Gunter Hampel. Elsewhere there's an almost Sun City Girls level of mutant lip along with touches of contemporary psych units like Dungen although that particularly lop-sided percussive swandive that they invariably tumble into and Michiko's great vocal interjections mean that the whole deal is unmistakably NNCK. NNCK have always done a great job of drawing attention to the crucial breakthrough role played by various non-canonical freaks working well below the radar and this is another swell public service event. And it sounds great. Comes with a booklet with tons of great pics and liners. Highly recommended.

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. 

Third instalment in this thrilling on-going series from Pat Murano of The No-Neck Blues Band/K-Salvatore/Malkuth with each LP associated with an astrological attribution taken from Decimus Magnus Ausonius (310-395). 2 feels like an extension of the ancient/future ritual appeal of 1, with swathes of electronics moving in mysterious whorls that flatline into dense beams of light before phantom melodies that are somewhere between arcs of classic al strings and devotional kosmische start to rise to the surface. Imagine a heady gothic ritual ala Hermann Nitsch or The Cosmic Couriers but with a deranged High Mass appeal and a cracked post-Whitehouse/Buchenwald atmosphere. Edition of 250 copies in silkscreened sleeves. Massively heavy and highly recommended: can’t get enough of these Decimus sides.

Stunning double LP from the duo of Pat Murano (The No-Neck Blues Band/Decimus et al) and Mark Morgan (Sightings). This is wild a-formal low level Industrial/electronic minimalism that has all of the toxic appeal of Relay For Death with sidelong works that evolve from sputtering electronics and pugilistic drum machines into towering alien structures that touch on aspects as diverse as early Whitehouse, Faust and Conrad Schnitzler soundtracking a Hermann Nitsch aktion. Given full sides of vinyl to spread out on, the duo build the tension by the subtle addition of all sorts of subliminal laminal detail until the whole thing is suspended on screaming metal drones, arcs of flamethrower melody and scrambled alien vocal broadcasts that sound like modulated EVP. This makes a great companion to the recent run of killer Decimus sides and it’s a classic slice of austere death drone from a pair of heads with an instinctive feel for the blackest of psychedelics. Edition of 270 copies. A massive set: highly recommended. 

New edition of 300 copies private press LP from Pat Murano of The No-Neck Blues Band, part of a series of 12 LPs visioned as reflections on the zodiacal attributions of Decimus Magnus Ausonious. 3 presents a set of scalding cracked electronics and automating ghost tones that’s somewhere between Conrad Schnitzler and some of the more ritualistic early-80s Industrial experiments. The rhythmic feel is really odd, with thin sheets of high feedback tone shuffling like sandpaper over thundercracks of doomy percussion and fuzz while a celestial almost Sonny Blount-style keyboard solo pilots the whole thing through your third eye. Amazing bleak psychedelia in the classic cold//austere European tradition but cut w/enough wig to make it a trip. Hand-painted sleeves. Recommended. 

New edition of 300 copies private press LP from Pat Murano of The No-Neck Blues Band, part of a series of 12 LPs visioned as reflections on the zodiacal attributions of Decimus Magnus Ausonious. This one is radically different from much of what has come before in the series, with a set of almost baroque synth work that at points comes off like the cosmic solo album that Ayler sideman Call Cobbs never made in the wake of Love Cry, with almost-harpsichord stylings circling around early music motifs while a planetary scale drone drags the whole deal over the event horizon and into an endlessly reflective/fragmentary zone where ghost tone bounce off each other again and again creating a delirious music box/hall of mirrors style that just keeps  on peaking. Wow. Certainly the deepest and most disorientating outing yet from Decimus. Hand-painted sleeves. Dedicated to Rabbi Hiya. Recommended. 

Another instalment in the Decimus series of astrologically-themed electro-meditations from Pat Murano of The No-Neck Blues Band/K-Salvatore/Malkuth et al. This one comes in a run of only 250 copies with silkscreened sleeves. Minimalist, circling electronics and percussive tone patterns dominate 4, with an atmosphere that is somewhere between the stylings of Richard Youngs’ Festival recording, the more weighty of the Kraut-influenced Industrial music (Nurse With Wound/Maurizio Bianchi) and the phased tape/electronics experiments of Charlemagne Palestine. Recommended, as is everything in the series to date.

Another instalment in the Decimus series of astrologically-themed electro-meditations from Pat Murano of The No-Neck Blues Band/K-Salvatore/Malkuth et al. This one comes in a run of only 300 copies and is one of the darkest and most claustrophobic Decimus sides. Minimal/primitive rhythm box jams with all of the alien appeal of Tolerance and the rest of the Vanity cabal cut-up with psychotic/dark modulated and variously filtered vocals that have all of the uncanny appeal of the most deformed and threatening of the early Whitehouse sides. The sonics walk the line between ethereally beautiful and darkly threatening and if this hadda come out on Come Org back in the day you’d be auctioning your grandma for a copy. A superb side and a singular instalment in this excellent on-going series. Recommended.

Album from this fantastic free jazz action trio featuring Matt Heyner (NNCK et al) on bass stunts, Matt Lavelle on trumpet and Ryan Sawyer on drums. Moves through great, pounding drums/trumpet face-offs that sound like a more martial take on Cherry and Blackwell's Mu to three-way time fluxing and wildly abstract silence/motion. Highly recommended.

Numbered edition of 120 copies CD-R documenting a live performance by Finnish folk spirit Jonna Karanka aka Kuupuu in Germany. More punk primitive than her studio recordings, this still succeeds in transporting you to the heart of the wood with toy instruments, bells, phased vocals and uncanny loops. At points it sounds like Jonna is channeling Eastern European volk music – waltzes, social music, hypnotic ethnic melodies – and slowly reducing them to flat-lined drones, at others like the she’s fantasising a future-prefect take on classic acid folk. Jonna makes some of the most bewitching small instrument psychedelia of any of the Finnish experimentalists. Packaged in a full-colour gatefold sleeve.

First saw this all-female trio that features Lau Nau, Islaja and Kuupuu back in the day when they toured the UK with Taurpis Tula and Virgin Eye Blood Brothers but this is the first official document of their existence. Hertta Lussu Assa feel like the central transmission point for a bunch of diverse Finnish modes, using toy instruments and keyboards that are as surreal as anything from Tomuttontu but cut with an eerie nocturnal aspect that comes out of the deep forest folk of Kuupuu or even Paivansade. At points the three voices combine in choral wraiths that float above bubbling microtonally-detailed drone in a way that is deeply narcotic. Melancholy music box melodies are situated in the middle-distance above small percussion sounds and subtly bent strings. If you like your femme-fronted folk cut w/dilated drones, broken down piano and wheezing loops then this is pretty much your dream trip. 

“Debut 4-song 7" by Brooklyn via L.A. mystery popsters with connections to Raw Thrills, Insted, Outer Limits Recordings, James Ferraro, & Luke Perry.... features Basement Jaxx/Michael Jackson/Sparks pop aspirations filtered through a Haunted Graffiti homemade aesthetic...” – OESB.

New LP from Stellar Om Source aka Christelle Gualdi, compiling and re-mastering selected tracks from what was originally a limited 3xCD-R set that we stocked at VT way back in the day. The renewed attention she’s been getting recently isn’t surprising: unlike many of the her ‘new age synth’ contemporaries, Gualdi has some advanced technique, playing rippling, almost Alice Coltarne-esque arpeggios of pure liquid tone set in deep cosmo-settings that have an ecstatic future jazz feel while tapping into the H-Pop style of timbres and modes salvaged from 1980s synth soundtracks and 1970s keyboard ritual. Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never makes a guest appearance on “Rites Of Fusion”. Full colour cover art by Gualdi and a free download. Recommended. 

New issue of this excellent underground/H-Pop journal, perfectly bound 110 pages w/colour and b/w printing and bundled with a CD-R and a DVD-R. Articles by Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never), Cameron Stallones (Sun Araw), Michael McGregor interviews Velvet Davenport, Jesse Jarnow on Recording The Cosmos with Greg Davis, an interview with new age keyboard legend Iasos and more by Daniel Bachman, Nate Grace, Emilie Friedlander and Curtis Knapp. Artwork from Camilla Padgitt-Coles, Brenna Murphy, Christelle Gualdi, Christian “Megazord” Oldham, Daniel White, E*Rock, Hydrothermal Emerald, Jon Rafman, Julien Laugier, Massimiliano Bomba/Rawraw, Michelle Ceja, Productlaneevol, Push the Button, Stephanie Davidson, Yannick Val Gesto. The CD-R comes with tracks from La Big Vic, Airbird, Laurel Halo, Dent May, Ducktails, Buffalo Moon, Velvet Davenport, The Twerps, Young Prisms, Big Troubles, Alex Bleeker, Chuck Person, Zonotope ™, Sacred Harp and Dolphins into the Future while the DVD-R features video art from Amy Ruhl (excerpts from How Mata Hari Lost Her Head & Found Her Body, scored by Julian Lynch, Samantha Cromwell (live video of Speculator), Laurel Halo (video feedback piece), Ray Concepcion (live video of Julian Lynch), Christian “Megazord” Oldham (video for Dolphins into the Future), Maia Stern (live video of La Big Vic) and Ryan Hover (video remix of Candy Claws song).