“Mark Sadgrove and Anthony Guerra are a pair of Australasian transplants currently based in Tokyo, Japan. Iron Sand is a series of electric guitar duets illuminated with harp, electronics, vocals and acoustic strings. Both players work minimal repeating shapes into nagging, emotionally insistent cells of smudged tone that re-visit the same territories again and again, as if to force a gentle confession of significance from the same two or three staggered notes. And it works. There’s something of Loren Connors’ foggy, late night style to the sound of the guitars, with washes of silver strings and solitary single notes left suspended in space. But whereas Connors uses variously amplified techniques in order to access the kind of highly-articulate zone where music and speech blur into one, Sadgrove and Guerra opt for re-statements of the most simplistic musical phonetics in order to access hypnagogic states. This is a magical, delicate recording, where minimal guitar lines interact with roaring analogue silence to create a music that somehow manages to combine stark, auraless playing with a deep, psychedelic atmosphere.” – David Keenan/The Wire.

Staggering blast of a-formal rock confusion from one of the first group’s to articulate the NON-aesthetic of the whole Breakdance The Dawn scene, contemporaries of xNoBBQx, Your Intestines and Mosseisley. Antipan featured Matt Earle on guitar, Nick Dan on vocals and bass, Anthony Guerra on drums and Sumugan Sivanesan on guitar.  Antipan have a scratchy, devolved guitar band sound that’s somewhere between the stumbling early Rough Trade style, the absolute refusal of No Wave and a disjointed Magic Band and this captures them live at Club Consolador De Dos Caras in December of 2008. There are primitive echoes of free jazz and even stomping two-chord blues but Antipan play the kind of blues more associated with Corwood Industries, wrapped in barbed wire and tuned to the moon. Pretty fantastic. Comes with an original photograph of the group rocking the bandstand and exposed to firelight by Guerra. Recommended.

Beautiful new limited CD-R that sees Texan poet/author/critic/publisher Bill Shute hook up with guitarist Anthony Guerra (Antipan/Green Blossoms/Vodka Sparrows et al) for an accompanied reading of six long-form poems. It has been a blast to see how Bill Shute’s Kendra Steiner Editions have grown over the past few years, with literally hundreds of poetry chapbooks and now a whole CD wing that runs the gamut of established writers/musicians and newer radical voices all presented in Bill’s highly personal DIY style. It’s also reassuring to see Shute still as creative and enthused as ever after so long in the game when many of his contemporary ‘rock crits’ have either become completely disillusioned and out of touch or been reduced to tossing off parodies of their earlier work. The fact that there’s more to the ‘career path’ of a rock crit as exemplified by the arc of Shute’s trails is a ray of light in a dark cul-de-sac mostly populated by burnouts. And he’s truly at the top of his game here. Shute’s poetry gains a whole new existence from being read out loud and here his slow, hypnotic delivery is perfectly complimented by Guerra’s minimal, clean guitar work. Indeed, there’s an oriental feel of stasis-in-movement to much of the music, with slow wheeling string patterns somewhere between Harry Partch’s Eleven Intrusions or even Heather Leigh’s classic Cuatro/Vocal recording. Indeed, while walking around Glasgow with this on headphones I’m struck by the mood it shares with John Cage and David Tudor’s amazing Indeterminacy box set and reminded of Shute’s classic Cage essay that ran as part of his Inner Mystique column in Black To Comm back in the day. Having only lived with this for a week or so I feel I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface but I know this will be a deep listening companion for a long time to come. Easily Shute’s best recording to date and a remarkable job from Guerra with the usual swank packaging we have come to expect from Black Petal. Highly recommended!

More supremely disobedient a-formal destructo rock from the sainted Breakdance The Dawn cabal, this time it's Antipan minus one member, hence the name-change. Here we have Matt Earle (Breakdance/Muura/Craft Bandits/you name it) on guitar, Anthony Guerra (Black Petal et al) on drums and Nick Dan on bass and vocals. Recorded live at Echo in Shibuya, Tokyo in 2010 by Earle, this may be the wildest side of Antipan music to date with a bass that sounds like a huge electrified rubber band, a guitar that combines crude single-note Blues stomps with cranky Rudolph Grey-isms and drums that mix the detonating style of Rashied Ali with the caveman ugh of yr favourite pluke. Tracks are held together with the flimsiest of refusenik logic, with Guerra keeping it martial even when the strings are expiring in gasps of tortuous feedback. Think early Royal Trux via The Shaggs via Kito Mizukumi Rouber and spin it next to your favourite 'punk' 7 for an eye-opening lesson in total musical freedom. Impossibly great, with the usual beautiful packaging from Black Petal.