Volcanic Tongue Catalogue

Keijo & The Free Players
Untitled

Pseudo Arcana

CD-R
£8.99


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.

Sami Nybacka/Matti Phil/Keijo Virtanen
Do You Want Something Beyond All Seasons

Audiobot BOT-119

CD-R
£6.99


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.

Keijo
Flying Over

Digitalis Digi-036

CD
£7.99


"The godfather of the Finnish Underground is back with his most complete album to date. Keijo Virtanen's far-reaching hands can be felt throughout the Nordic peninsula from his home in JyvÑskylÑ. While he often performs in numerous groups such as The Free Players and Kheta Hotem, it is in his solo work that he is most accomplished. Virtanen is not just a talented and prolific musician, but also and artist and published author. His inspiration and creativity know no bounds. At 54 years-old, Virtanen still rides his motorcycle all over the country and shows no signs of letting up. Virtanen finally took his show on the road this past autumn, touring with members of Uton and Vapaa throughout Northern Europe. He also released two CDs on the much heralded Last Visible Dog imprint. "Flying Over" is the culmination of a landmark year for this troubadour. These nine tracks run the gambit of all of Keijo's talents, from the rattling blues transgressions of "On the Edge," to the throatsinging-laced organic drone of "Late Night Here & Far Away," and completed with the harmonium-laced " Virtanen's range is pure magic. While the bulk of "Flying Over" is entirely Virtanen's creation, he is joined by two of his closest collaborators on two tracks: Sami Virtanen and Jussi Karsikas, two extremely talented Finns in their own right. Whatever the moment calls for, though, Virtanen fills the void and the empty space with exactly what is needed. He is a wizard of sound and a seemingly endless well of magnificent music. It shouldn't be surprising for someone who makes their home at the center of the universe." - Digitalis.

Way Of The Cross
Mind Of The Dolphin

Phoenix 02

LP
£12.99


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.

Keijo
Songs Of Luck

Ikuisuus IKU-020

CD
£10.99


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.

James Ferraro
Last American Hero/Adrenaline’s End

Dreamtime Taped Sounds

C60 Cassette
£6.99


Fantastic new limited edition cassette album from James Ferraro that works as both a departure from and a consolidation of the most recent arc of his work, with a series of meditations on American concepts of heroism and freedom as refracted via MTV, Hollywood and various black magic marketing strategies. The first side starts off with an unexpected slow avant blues guitar piece that picks up organ and synth to sound uncannily like early Charalambides before breaking into an electric boogie that serves to conflate notions of authentic outlaw forms and clichéd rebel shorthand while sounding totally fucked up. The flip is even better, with the first long track coming across like an Afrodelic take on Scottish folk drones, with what sounds like orchestras of haunting bagpipe melody repeated to the point of satori. Throw in a ton of incidental CSI-styled bliss/synth moves and you got another classic, one-off shot from Ferraro. Comes in full colour pro-printed sleeves. Highly recommended.

P.A.R.A.
Manifestival

New Age Tapes No Cat

CD-R
£7.99


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 one has a more zone ESP-Disk feel, with overdubbed vocal chants, bell tones, keyboard drones and a heavy Bobby Beausoleil/Angus MacLise/Joyous Lake-style atmosphere all siphoned through the patented New Age label aesthetic. Uniquely transporting and highly recommended.

P.A.R.A.
Pentacles Of Life

New Age Tapes No Cat

CD-R
£7.99


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.

P.A.R.A.
Dune Riders

New Age Tapes No Cat

CD-R
£7.99


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. The murky, lo-fi feel of the recordings seems to function as a scrying mirror that facilitates the unlocking of repressed personas with the result that at points it sounds like Labanna is duetting with multiple incarnations of herself, as loop after loop of fourth world chant, tape junk and drums work to disorientate you completely. There are aspects of Meredith Monk, Cameron, Fursaxa, the hysterical cinema of Kenneth Anger and Ira Cohen… all filtered through the uniquely brain-erasing, Angus MacLise-to-the-nth-degree New Age label aesthetic. Fantastic and highly recommended.

James Ferraro
Discovery

Holy Mountain 106659LP

LP
£14.99


Vinyl upgrade for what was originally a self-released Europe-only CD-R from James Ferraro of The Skaters/Lamborghini Crystal et al. Discovery is packaged as a companion volume to Clear and feels like an extension of the modes first extrapolated there, with hypnotic rhythms driving crystal-complex keyboard patterns through endlessly reflective hall-of-mirrors style sonic environs. The album becomes progressively denser as we approach the second half, with what could almost be a backwards re-staging of Faust’s “Krautrock” fed slowly into the nearest wormhole. Another monster. Comes with a free MP3 download. Highly recommended.

Dead White
Holy Deprivation

Arbor 09

CD-R
£7.99


Great new set of savage guitar blunder from this floating Skaters associate, Andy Brack aka San Diego's Dead White. Primitively executed lead guitar damage that blasts through a mire of tectonic analog judder with a wall of amps style that is somewhere between The Dead C and Fushitsusha if they hadda cut a live to walkman tape for Xpressway back in the day before descending to some medieval dungeon lurk with occasional lone shots of phased electricity, Industrial bulldozing and macabre vocal injections ala Ferraro/Clark. Comes in a six colour fold-out poster sleeve silkscreened by Jelle Crama in an edition of 130 copies.

K2
Chameleon Ballet

Olde English Spelling Bee No Cat

LP
£15.99


Fantastic limited edition vinyl pressing of what was originally a limited self-released CD-R from this new 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 already completely sold out at source. Highly recommended.

P.A.R.A.
Purge

New Age Tapes No Cat

CD-R
£7.99


First of two new limited self-released CD-Rs in hand-sewn full-colour paper packages from Labanna Bly, James Ferraro’s partner in magick, released on Ferraro’s own New Age imprint. Sounding like a more infernal Fursaxa, Bly uses crude, foggy loops and barbarous mantras to generate a thick, transformative atmosphere where shadows of drones seem populated by all sorts of nocturnal wildlife. The atmosphere is heavily ritualistsic, with the feel of the best of the Kenneth Anger soundtracks and MacLise’s Thunderbolt Pagoda jam given a massive injection of heavy feminine energy.

Black Joker
Watch Out!

Olde English Spelling Bee OESB-33

LP
£14.99


Great looking, fully re-mastered vinyl edition of what was originally a Europe-only cassette released in an edition of 80 copies from the solo project of Spencer Clark of The Skaters/Vodka Soap/Monopoly Child et al. Spencer describes Black Joker as being more drone-focused and with faster percussion than the recent Monopoly Child sets. Indeed, the percussion is thrifty and up-front, with arcs of criss-crossing time signatures generating maximum space/time confusion.  The combination of trance-informed momentum and bubbling electronic sci-fi tones sounds closest to one of the Sun Ra Arkestra’s most future-visioned takes on “Ancient Aethiopia” while expanding on the classic post-Angus MacLise feel of all of the best Skaters material. Comes with pro-printed 80s style 12” maxi-sleeves with liner notes by Fortean authority, itinerant visionary and Skaters road mangler in-absentia Charles Berlitz. ”…the drifting of desert sand sculptures appearing within crystaline miraged mountains during a cycle in which the gleaming of sand star sparkled night is blown, floating towards dawn, as the racing of the camels amongst the sunbound mirages expend dimensions of presentation for these sculptures, which, as wind diminishes and returns, a sand is cast to represent the variety of dimensions interacted : as symbold vision, where the atmosphered wind senses the stars amongst the sand, the camel within the mirage, and the mediation of an experiences whole motion of interaction...” Recommended.

James Ferraro
Citrac

Arbor 106

2xLP
£17.99


New edition of 400 double LP from James Ferraro that presents one of his most ambitious Dystopian TV futures by assembling a suite of movie soundtrack themes, electro keyboard rites and surveillance fantasies, complete with artwork that conflates 1980s breakout blockbusters with contemporary military technology and the spectacularisation of war as an arcade game. Citrac bundles a new album of recordings with the previously released Postremo Mundus Techno-Symposium and excerpts and alternative edits from another self-released CD-R, Liquid Metal’s Alternative Soundtrack To Digital Overdrive. The track titles take the whole sick city/dystopian cheeseburger USA vibe to a whole other level – “Computer Chipped Police”, “Surveillance ”, “Public Execution Of A No Mark”, “Gates Surrounding Control Tower” – while the sonics combine bass guitar, thunder cracks, Nazi-fied marching songs, triumphant horns, video game asteroid explosions, tape-warped muscleman grunts and meathead vocal chants. The effect is as horrifying and confusing as the post-microwave culture that James both worships and abhors and this is some of the most startling black nightmare psychedelia of his career. Comes with two full colour inner sleeves with new art by James. Highly recommended.

James Ferraro
Body Fusion 1

Summer Headrush 2009 Series SHR2S-03

CD-R
£7.99


Third installment in a new series of releases from Ferraro, part of his Summer Headrush 2009 Series vision. Inspired by “Visualisations that came to mind while receiving self-induced hypocapnia or as it’s commonly called ‘free fall’, the albums being representative of the free fall head space.” Body Fusion 1 presents a themed suite with track titles like "Shemale", "Pregnant Air", "Angel Alien" and "Species Within" that takes off in Multitopia's transformative worlds-within-worlds style. Cut-up throughout with pitch-shift sonic reassignments of she-males and transvestite phone sex lines that promise "fantasy fulfilment 24/7" the music feels like an attempt to mint a form of holy/devotional reverie directed towards the celebration of the gatekeepers of the most primal, transformational sexual urges, with lap-dancing clubs, peep shows, strip bars and chatlines re-imagined as temples to the lifeforce. Featuring some of James's darkest transits, the music is built around huge organ drones that build to the kind of otherwordly ascensions of Popol Vuh's "Vuh" over which he drops in huge crashes of percussion and eerie music box melodies. Full colour covers too. Highly recommended.

James Ferraro
Body Fusion 2

Summer Headrush 2009 Series SHR2S-04

CD-R
£7.99


Fourth installment in a new series of releases from Ferraro, part of his Summer Headrush 2009 Series vision. Inspired by “Visualisations that came to mind while receiving self-induced hypocapnia or as it’s commonly called ‘free fall’, the albums being representative of the free fall head space.” This second volume of Body Fusion continues the first's theme of body transformation, she-males and temples to the sex urge by combining massed keyboard drones, modal takes on 80s soundtrack melodies and disturbing, modulated phone sex voices where 1-800-Shemale callers are offered dial-in fantasises over ascensions of percussion, cartoon voices and fleets of orchestrated dogs (!?). Ferraro makes particularly profound use of samples of wordless vocals played on a keyboard, creating a form of sci-fi chorale that paralelles the themes of surgical transformation, hypnagogic implants and the desire to exceed and confuse the limits of the body in a form of human/alien communion. It genuinely sounds like nothing else. Titles include "Genitalia Eclipse", "Data Implant", "De Ja Vu Axis" and "Clown Fish Prayer". Full colour covers. Highly recommended.

James Ferraro
iAsia

Summer Headrush 2009 Series SHR2S-05

CD-R
£7.99


Part of the second limited batch of Summer Headrush 2009 releases from James Ferraro of The Skaters with full-colour pro-printed sleeves. iAsia as in iPhone, iAsia presents a future-primitive vision of cyber Asia as broadcast via 107.7 XM Radio Mars, a Sublime Frequencies-style covert vision of a continent plugged into the grid and mutating via endlessly refracted and digitally morphed images of itself. Or if you’re a dumbo it’s a series of keyboard, loops and sample jams that sez future Bollywood = Multitopia. Melodies are devoured and reconfigured from around the world, further confusing the geographical focus as a digitized one world. There are hints of Ferraro’s Polynesian obsession on the second track, “Happy HD Bengal/Casino Neptune”, with tumbling percussive melodies and swells of synth while distant clouds of heavenly vocals bob on the horizon. The rest of the music is threaded with 80s-inflected modal melodies that might have soundtracked a Bollywood space cops drama that visioned 2012 as 1982 with more neon and a power synth backing. Some of Ferraro’s more dramatic Hypnagogic pop inventions.

James Ferraro
Wild World

Summer Headrush 2009 Series SHR2S-07

CD-R
£7.99


Part of the second limited batch of Summer Headrush 2009 releases from James Ferraro of The Skaters with full-colour pro-printed sleeves. Wild World is Edward Flex visits Multitopia, one of the bleakest and darkest of Ferraro’s recordings thus far, as he ties up fantasies of body modification and Hollywood stardom with terrible eschatological visions and cut-ups of recorded testimonies of members of the Heaven’s Gate mass-suicide cult on their hopes for a transport to heaven. His use of minimal musical fragments looped to infinity is at its most twisted and wrong, with obsessive vocal figures played out over leery keyboard parts and snippets of vocal that conflate plastic surgery with pre-lapsarian and post-UFO powers of transformation. There’s often a lurid, cartoon aspect to Ferraro’s amplification of the various desires that contemporary popular culture works as a cipher for but this one feels less technicolour and more desperate, charting the apocalyptic fantasies (via Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson) that find their apotheosis in California’s end-of-land culture through a series of black magical workings. Also features some of Ferraro’s most shredding 80s/90s metal guitar. An extremely heavy installment.

James Ferraro
Son Of Dracula

Summer Headrush 2009 Series SHR2S-08

CD-R
£7.99


Part of the second limited batch of Summer Headrush 2009 releases from James Ferraro of The Skaters with full-colour pro-printed sleeves. One of the most minimal, spaced-out and transcendentally beautiful of Ferraro’s recent releases, Son Of Dracula is the sound of waves lapping at the furthest edges of space while someone on a distant planet plays a ghostly Hawaiian guitar and the stars twinkle in high-frequency song. Aspects of Scorces at their most translucent give way to a weird Sun Ra plays the incidental music to a Hall Of Mirrors scene from Scooby Doo feel and an incredible cover version of Elvis’s most spooked recording “Blue Moon” into a haunted, pitch-shift Elvis medley. The pink Cadillac on the front pretty much gives the game away. Totally bewitching.

James Ferraro
Hacker Track

Summer Headrush 2009 Series SHR2S-09

CD-R
£7.99


Part of the second limited batch of Summer Headrush 2009 releases from James Ferraro of The Skaters with full-colour pro-printed sleeves. Warning: Hacker Track™ is an eXtremely addictive cyber drug downloadable online into your brain. Hacker Track is a deprogramming/reprogramming tool created by Ferraro that uses auto-suggestion, hypnotism and sonic download technology in order to re-boot your mind. Hacker Track features some of Ferraro’s most obsessive loop constructs set within haunted laminal structures. The first piece is a murky fog of wave tones and modulated barbarous vocals that aims to by-pass the brain’s rational/language centers and effect complete organic/cyber communion. As the repeat-phrases become more alien and insistent the piece moves into a zone of ‘meaningless’ sound that works as an unsettling transport. The second piece deals in euphoric sonic boom stylings that somehow combine the wartime machinery of the David Jackman field recordings with triumphal organ tones and the expressway sounds of kundalini take-off.  A beautiful brain eraser.

Grippers Nother Onesers
At Slimer Beach

Olde English Spelling Bee OESB-43

LP
£15.99


Limited vinyl reissue of one of James Ferraro’s greatest sides, Lamborghini Crystal’s 1992 Cool Runnings, now remastered and rebirthed as Grippers Nother Onesers’ At Slimer Beach. The LP is built around amazing disco/psych/drone/glam songs with high, high vox, gospelised choirs, repeat rhythms, jamming wah guitars and that beautiful, refracted-through-a-sea-of-fug sound that characterises all of his best work. Joyous, profoundly affecting and seemingly broadcast from a bedroom in the 1970s that still harbours the slowly decaying ghost of progressive disco/funk/glam dreams, the set runs from primitive NY Dolls-styled trash through full ensemble Aquarian musicals. Another singular release from this always confounding artist. Features Ghostbusters-tribute artwork and some naked snaps of our hero. Dedicated to Richard Ramirez..“It was formed by James Ferraro and it is the first release under this name (it is inspired by childhood memories of seeing holograms for the first time and hearing disco/rock music coming from other rooms around the house and from behind walls, I remember realizing the different shades/ and it felt mystical, and the images and sounds had employed psychic senses I had never used before, total ' disco breeze/sun reflecting on iridescent oil sunglasses,)” – James Ferraro. Edition of 450 copies.  Highly recommended. 

James Ferraro
Last American Hero

Olde English Spelling Bee OESB-37

LP
£16.99


Edition of 450 copies vinyl reissue of a great cassette album from James Ferraro, originally released on Dreamtime Taped Sounds, a series of meditations on American concepts of heroism and freedom as refracted via MTV, Hollywood and various black magic marketing strategies. Starts off with an unexpected slow avant blues guitar piece that picks up organ and synth to sound uncannily like early Charalambides before breaking into an electric boogie that serves to conflate notions of authentic outlaw forms and clichéd rebel shorthand while sounding totally fucked up. Comes with an MP3 download coupon: “"THE ENERGY ENHANCED GLADIATOR WISHES TO MERGE AS ONE WITH HIS GIRL. HIS TONGUE RING GLOWS UNDERNEATH THE RENO MOON. HER SILVER SILENCE BEGS FOR HIS PLEASURE. HE CAN HEAR HER CALL DEEP WITHIN HIS BEING, AS THE DESERT CLOUDS ROLL ON OVER HIS METAL SLAVE. SHE SUBMITS TO BE PARKED AND THE SHADOW OF LOVE IS AMOUNG THEM. A BLACKTOP TUMBLE WEED ROLLS AROUND THE DRIED TAR ONLY A DREAM OF IT’S MASTER BLOWING IN THE WIND. FROM THE HAND OF THE GLADIATOR WHO NOW HUNTS FOR A DREAM, A FLAT SCREEN DREAM. A GROUP OF HUMANS PRESUMED LOST FOR THE LAST DECADE AND A HALF WERE FOUND ALIVE CAMPING OUT IN THE BACK RECESSES OF A COSTCO SUPER MARKET. AFTER BEING LOST DEEP INSIDE OF THE COSTCO BUILDING FOR WEEKS WITHOUT ANY OUTSIDE CONTACT, THEY FINALLY STARTED THE SETTLEMENT OF "NO FEAR". The front cover (JUDGE JUDYITE IN SODOM AND GOMORRAH) represents the programmed citizen and the process of it’s logical sequence as visible from the working creative inner ego of the program (the living human host’s perspective) in a snapshot form in the empty world created by the MODERN Gomorrah temple BEST BUY™ plaza center. The back cover represents the same idea but this one exhibits the inner head perspective of the "LIQUID ENERGY ENHANCED GLADIATOR IN THE DIGITAL COLOSSEUM A.G.* *After Google " – James Ferraro. Highly recommended.

Kemialliset Ystavat
Alkuharka

Fonal

CD
£10.99


Led by Jan Anderzen, Kemialliset Ystavat 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.

Kemialliset Ystavat
Lumottu Karkkipurkki (Vapaa Systeemi)

Fonal FR-38

CD
£10.99


Timely CD reissue of these much in demand and barely available at the time releases, which originally came out on a cassette on Huutomerkki-nauhat in 2000 and on a double 8” picture disc set on Campbell Kneale’s Celebrate Psi Phenomenon imprint in 2002. The first section, Lumottu Karkkipurkki, is inspired by an obscure Finnish children’s book which translates as “The Enchanted Candy Jar”, while the second section, Vapaa Systeemi (Free System) takes it’s co-ordinates on somewhere even deeper in personal/mythic space. Most of the music is solo Jan Anderzen, short tracks that work hints of DIY folk carnival and glugs of almost Industrial process into some of his punkinest miniatures to dates. This is the real garage psych. Recommended. Comes in the standard Fonal fold-out card digipak with obi.

Kemialliset Ystavat
Alkuharka

Beta-lactam Ring Records mt122w

LP
£19.99


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.

Hevoset
s/t

Dekorder 024

LP
£11.99


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…

Avarus
Matti Maapahkina Ormylat

Imvated No Cat

7"
£6.99


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

The Puke Eaters
Y.M.I. Dead?

Vauva 06

7"
£6.99


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

Tsembla
Tuplafiesta

Vauva 07

7"
£6.99


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.

Uton
Sacred Hiss/Ghost Oracle

Ikuisuus IS-004

CD-R
£6.99


Vortex of iron-clad synth melodies, wordless deep field vocals ala Wickham-Smith/Youngs and the sound of huge dinosaur silhouettes head-butting on the horizon from this revered European thinker. Recorded spring 2005 in Tampere.

Uton
Alitaju Ylimina

Dekorder

LP
£11.99


First ever vinyl album from this mysterious European psychedelic communal drone/action unit in an edition of 500 copies with fold-out art sleeves featuring art by Uton on the outside and art from Dutch artist Christelle Gualdi on the inner. The actual sonics shift from almost MEV-scale electro-acoustic destruction into doomy halflights of subliminal melody caught up in vortices of metal and teeth.

Uton
Pearls And Dust


3xCD-R
£16.99


Triple disc set from Uton, bound in a black plastic folder with colour art booklet: “Disc one is a capture of the Uton live speech and riddle and features Bridget Hayden of Vibracathedral Orchestra as a guest member. Disc two is a reissue of the mysterious Uton tape on the back then still mysterious Sloow Tapes from coded B.D.P. (released in 2005). Disc three is the mosaic of different strange Uton sound and content. 28 pages of full colour. Uton eye candy embraces these 3 discs of freedom. This is a private peek in the memory of Jani Hirvonen. A dive in the hole in time. These are the books of Hirvonen, one of the first seekers of truth in the modern take on introspection. A post 2000 view on things, that feeds happily into the bucket of post 1965. An imaginary of things to do when nearing a vortex.” – DTS.

Uton
Tales From The Ancient Fire

Om Ha Sva Ha Ksha Ma La Va Ra Yam Recordings OM-20

CD-R
£6.99


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.

Uton
Solar Spells

Om Ha Sva Ha Ksha Ma La Va Ra Yam Recordings OM-21

CD-R
£6.99


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.

Uton
Holy Burn

Om Ha Sva Ha Ksha Ma La Va Ra Yam Recordings OM-22

CD-R
£6.99


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.

Hanage Youchien
The Children Of Ganga

Om Ha Sva Ha Ksha Ma La Va Ra Yam Recordings OM-04

CD-R
£6.99


“Uton meets the young couple from Osaka, Japan in Laxman Jhula, Rishikesh, next to the holy river Ganga, playing together in the roof of the hotel, in the room and in the rocks next to the river (and one confused young saddhu watching this rattle). Childish psychedelic folk improv using violin, ravanhattha (trad Rajasthani instrument), frame drum, maracas, mouth-organ, flutes and voices. Edition of 40 copies.”

Mutantea
Sleepy Sounds Electric

Ikuisuus IS-006

CD-R
£6.99


Ominous, vibrating drone/threat from the trio of Anla Courtis (Reynols), J. Koho (Aan, Vapaa et al) and Jani Hirvonen (Uton, Aan etc). Three electric guitars, recorded in the heat of the am in the middle of the winter.

Uton
Unexplained Objects

Dekorder 037

LP
£12.99


Majorly alien side from this great Euro cult birthed by Jani Hirvonen, with modulated vocals and pulsing synths announcing their touchdown in elsewhere. The weird War Of The Worlds vibe gives way to a tannoy system in space feel, with F/X damaged hieroglyphics slurping around their mouths while somewhere in another galaxy planets are eviscerated with single beams of tone. Easily the most ‘out’ side from Jani thus far. Edition of 500 copies. 

Embryonnck
s/t

Sound @ One/Staubgold #78/

LP
£15.99


Limited Sound@one vinyl version of long-time coming collaboration between The No-Neck Blues Band and original ethno/jazz Kraut caravan Embryo complete with a cool poster and two large inserts with extensive liners. 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. Highly recommended.

Embryonnck
s/t

Staubgold #67

CD
£11.99


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.

Coach Fingers
One Jack Shy Of A Cycle

Black Dirt Records BD-05

LP
£16.99


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.

The No-Neck Blues Band
Languid Red Marchetti

Alga Marghen Plana-Zaum

LP
£19.99


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. 

Kuupuu
Yokehra

Dekorder #016

LP
£13.99


Amazing new LP (first of two proposed volumes) that bundles the best of the many self-released CD-Rs/tapes released by Jonna Karanka aka Kuupuu, featuring material from the albums Sateen Suutelemat, Kulta Sulka, Kuupuu, Kevatlauluja and I Can Walk The Dark. Beautiful, full-colour pro-printed sleeves with art by Jonna: Kuupuu is working cover for the solo thoughts of Jonna Karanka, a beautiful cog in Finland's free folk underground. Jonna also records as Kukkiva Poliisi and is a member of the all-girl acid-folk freakout ensemble Hertta Lussu éssÑ alongside Merja Kokonen (aka Islaja) and Laura Naukkarinen (aka Lau Nau). Kuupuu are the most immediately entrancing sub-radar group to come out of Finland yet, combining a wild avant garde aesthetic with a love of lo-fi fug, beautiful, tranced folk forms and perilous doses of pure glee. Their many recordings combine child-like, ultra-naãve nursery rhyme vocals and melodies with corridors of starlit percussion, sawing purple swathes of string, impenetrable forest rituals, beautiful song forms and some staggering psychedelic tongue action. Totally otherworldly.

Kuupuu
Lumen Tahden

Time-Lag 044

LP
£20.99


Edition of 750 copies deluxe vinyl edition of the new LP from Jonna Karanka aka Kuupuu, a floating member of a bunch of Finnish collectives including Hertta Lussu Assa, The Anaksimandros and Avarus. Kuupuu’s music could vaguely be described as acid-folk but it also takes in the kind of oddball DIY of groups like The Godz, the homemade aesthetic of Chocolate Monk, the ghostly madrigal style of Tara Burke’s Fursaxa etc wile coating the whole deal in a dreamy, out-of-focus forest of pagan percussion, delicate vocals and witchy atmospherics. There’s a soft electronic pulse that runs through the bulk of the new album, flickering like starlight in the background of solo piano conceptions that take off on the minimal repeat-logic of Richard Youngs circa Advent while stringing them with wraiths of ghostly vocals and backwards tape. A classic of bedroom female avant-folk, straight from the heart of the wood. Packaged in a heavy laminated full colour gatefold sleeve on audiophile 180g vinyl. Highly recommended.