LP from Sonic Youth that makes a necessary survey of rare and hard to locate tracks from the recent past that includes bonus tracks and out-takes from Sonic Nurse, Experimental Jet Set, Trash And No Star, Murray Street and the Noho Furniture Sessions as well as stray single tracks etc. The sonics here focus more on the pursuit of extended horizons that best characterises the group's live shows and it ends with a totally mesmeric unedited version of sometime showstopper "The Diamond Sea". Comes in a full-colour gatefold sleeve with tons of liners and the best ever snap of Sonic Youth on the back.

Split 7” featuring a single electro-acoustic drone work from Campbell Kneale of Birchville Cat Motel’s new project - the kind of fluffy bell-tone/metal levitation previously the domain of Matthew Bower’s Sunroof! - while the flip features Thurston Moore and Andrew MacGregor (aka Gown) power-thinking their way through heavy feedback/rock moves.

Debut CD from this new guitar duo featuring Thurston Moore and Andrew from Gown. Tracks slowly spool from small sounds generated by the furthest reaches of the instrument - the crackle of jack sockets, strings clipped against pick-ups - through to the kind of slowly modulating chord barbs that launched a bunch of Sonic Youth songs circa Daydream Nation. Cover art by Bill Nace of Vampire Belt et al.

Torrential three way free jazz/rock pile-up that tracks all the way back to Thurston’s epochal Barefoot In The Head date with Sauter and Dietrich while instant-visioning the future via minimal, psychedelic interventions, classic Sonic Youth-sounding guitar clank and explosive sax/string bulldozing. Some of the playing here is straight-up gorgeous, with the way the group build luminous form from a bed of hovering guitars and Flaherty’s bold tenor sax form sounding like a classic late-Coltrane take on devotional hymn forms. Bill Nace (Vampire Belt/Northampton Wools et al) and Thurston’s guitars are often indistinguishable, with Nace’s up-close modified guitar style pulling Thurston into gravities of microtonal detail and subtle textural invention while Flaherty takes the lead and just bleeds all over the goddamn room. A fantastic set, way more than a mere jam, and one that feels sourced from deep inside the classic free jazz tradition. Recommended.

”Meeting of melted minds on this split LP featuring Sheffield based long time local buddies Hunter Gracchus and Germany based performance and musicial duo of Kommissar Hjuler Und Frau (aka Mama Baer). The Hunter Gracchus have released an ever growing catalogue of super well received releases for the likes of Chironex, Golden Lab, Recollections of Knulp and Chocolate Monk. They also collaborated with Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides and Chora as Le Drapeau Noir, as well as performing solo and in other fantastic far out acts such as Vampire Blues, Harappian Night Recordings and Blue Yodel, as well as two thirds of the trio running the excellent Singing Knives label and all working full time. I have to admit, I have no idea how they can manage to do all this, pretty damn impressive. Their side is an amazing live recording from La Planta, Argentina entitled 'Mujeres De La Boca', and if you've ever been to their Furniture Makers practice space, it sounds like Hunter Gracchus somehow managed to transport its entire contents of obscure musical objects over there with their perculiar brains to record some of the best live shit they've produced so far... a really great side long free playing improvised weird out with screwed up voices, skronky blurts and freestyle tribal percussion. Kommissar Hjuler Und Frau have been releasing material for quite some time on their own Der Schöne Hjuler-Memorial-Fond label, including a host of obscenely limited CDRs, cassettes and records. On top of that they've found the time release some truly astounding genre blending avant craziness on Ultra Eczema, Scumbag and Blossoming Noise. For this split LP KHJ & F's 'Zwei Einenperson (Pt. 2)', is a manic 22 minute side of avant garde experi-mentalism, with Kommissar Hjuler shredding electric guitar strings and destroying tapes while Mama Baer's insane vocal fluctuate between the erotic and pure demonic screaming. This recording of Kommissar Hjuler und Frau was made in March 2009 when working on the set for the performance of Zwei Eineperson. This was presented live at the vernissage of Mama Baer's and Kommissar Hjuler's exhibition Geteilter Raum at Kunstraum Winterthur, Switzerland on 2nd April 2009. A CD-R with several parts from their work on this set was previously released on their SHMF label in a very small edition. This is the re-issue of part 2 from their recordings, live in their living room. The full performance has been released as a CD-R and DVD in small edition as well. Edition of 500 on heavyweight vinyl with pro printed jackets, and insert.” – BRR. 

Kommissar Hjuler and his Frau, Mama Baer, have single-handedly reinvented sound poetry with a wild performative style that confuses arguments, vocal hysteria, power politics, goof-offs, Zappa covers and generally disobedient art while minting a style of vocal performance that is totally unique. Been looking forward to this particular release for some time, described by the duo as a series of folk tales from the Brothers Grimm re-worked in a way that is “not suitable for children”! But really, I gotta say, this might just be the best thing they have ever recorded, eclipsing even their amazing Ultra Eczema album. Their approach ranges across a bunch of styles. There’s the wild argumentative attack w/Mama weeping and singing while Kommissar shouts and howls in the background, the minimal almost Rev/Vega or even Meredith Monk approach with tense vocal atmospherics over a minimal, repetitive pulse, hypnotic sequences of breath and broken guitars and even some wild post-Junko eviscerations of lung power. In some ways it’s their most ‘musical’ release to date but it’s also completely fucked, especially when Mama Baer starts singing children’s nursery rhymes and blowing folk primitive melodies to shreds with alla the atomic power of the late Donald Ayler. Seriously, an amazing side by two of the freest spirits in the underground. Great sleeve art too, hand-numbered edition of only 200 copies. Another candidate for record of the year! Highly recommended. 

Another instalment in this on-going cassette series documenting vocal-only performances, this time from our favourite central European avant gardists Kommissar Hjuler and his partner Mama Baer. The tape starts out in ultra-minimal fashion, with Mama singing on the very edge of hearing before she bursts into a concerted almost Junk-esque series of shrieks and body convulsions and Kommissar enters with a cracked nursery rhyme theme that he repeats to the point of insanity while reducing Mama’s accompaniment to virtual hysteria. Personally, I can’t get enough. 

Limited new split LP with over-the-top handmade artwork, every single copy features an entirely individual piece of art from Hjuler and Mama Baer. Been a bunch of consummately weirdo splits and collaborations from Kommissar and Hjuler of late but this has got to be the most inexplicable, with a side from re-formed UK post-punk/DIY group Normal Normal, who play agit-funk in a kind of relentless Pop Group/The Ex style, coupled with a side of some of Kommissar’s most out vocal ravings. There are snatches of hypnotic spoken word, degraded piano abuse, even some weird keyboard loops that could almost be out-takes from Goblin’s Suspiria soundtrack, all cut-up with domestic ravings and variously abused small instruments. I’ve said it before but no one has re-thunk sound poetry quite so radically as Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baeer. But what were Medium Medium thinking? Is this some kind of weird Trojan Horse move by Hjuler? Will we ever know? Each LP looks amazing too, with over the top original artwork on each, inserts and your own individual number.