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.

Edition of 500 copies from Andrew MacGregor’s solo project, with screenprinted sleeves done at VG Kids plus insert: “It has been said by a very wise man that a record is a document of a time and thus should only need to be justified as such. Wandering glory is a portrait of change of seasons, change of location and the movement of time. Recorded mostly on the 3rd floor while brothers visited, tours began, tours ended and bags were packed. Life is full of flaws and learning is as never-ending as time” - Gown

New set of lucid power drones from Campbell Kneale’s new post-Birchville Cat Motel project.

Two new vertical tone ascensions from Campbell Kneale’s post-Birchville Cat Motel project, with a particularly barbaric ecstatic noise/death edge. Edition of 500 copies.

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. 

Staggering unreleased album from Campbell Kneale’s Birchville mothership, still the kings of contemporary planet-devouring NZ drone, released in an edition of only 100 copies on his new private imprint Don’t Fuck With Magic. This is a slice of raw celestial punk that has one eye fixed on the early Majora sound – Beyond The Rim/Here Time Is Space et al – and another on a particularly gorgeous vision of sheet metal minimalism that uses heavenly chord ascensions ala Ash Ra Temple/My Bloody Valentine to reconnect with the eternal music modes of Phill Niblock/Maryanne Amacher/The Dream Syndicate et al. Some of the most wildly transportive and sensual drone music ever made by Alice Cooper fans. Full colour slipcase sleeves: highly recommended but better make it fast! “Oly! If you are gonna have a title like THAT you'd better have your proverbial shit together, wouldn't you say? Slated for release on double LP as Birchville Cat Motel became rather long in the tooth, this one missed out on daylight as the band went to the guillotine. A world of grinding rainbow fuzz that drinks deeeeep from the heavy-psyche doom-trip chalice without even a whiff of anything that could be called 'metal'. Blinding, deafening, brain-erasing... this is catalogue-trumping stuff that kinda makes me miss this band.” – DFWM.

Ferocious new project from Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel/Our Love Will Destroy The World et al) on his own private Don’t Fuck With Magic imprint in an edition of only 100 copies. TMPLS takes the torrential aspect of the early Broken Flag sound and rewires it w/a psychoactive post-drone appeal, creating cacophonous barbed wire symphonies that threaten to re-wire your brain while speaking in tongues of pure thunder. Hard to think of anyone that can make such a brutal attack seem so euphoric and oddly musical, with all sorts of tormented spectra inhabiting relentlessly overdriven clouds of steel tone in a way that balances a controlled compositional feel with the instant satori of all-improvised power-tone ascensions. Listened to at the correct volume this one ranks alongside Metal Machine Music as one of the essential formulations of form out of freedom and is a massively addictive spin. Campbell Kneale’s half-hour still beats your life. “Annihilating Harsh Noise Walls (TM) that find their inspirational core in traditional Chinese waterfall paintings. Sorry kids, no prostitute-murdering, throat-slitting, rape-porn to be found here... TMPLS would rather pretend it doesn’t happen. Tones so chunky and micro-detailed you can drive monstertrucks through the pockets of air between the godalmighty cRRRRRunch. Speaker destroying blankness of asteroid-like heaviosity that tunes me in to a plain so high I only have Sherpas and goats for company. Oh yeah... it’s pronounced 'Temples'...Y'geddit?” – DFWM. Recommended!

Edition of only 60 copies private press release from Campbell Kneale’s post-Birchville Cat Motel project, Our Love Will Destroy The World: lots of ritualistic hand-percussion and soft, phasing electronics on this one, giving it all of the miasmic power of the early Popol Vuh/Werner Herzog collaborations w/aspects of Pauline Oliveros and even NNCK thrown into the mix. It definitely has the feel of a journey, of some kind of narrative unfolding, as the percussion pushes the whole thing forward with alla the stoned determination of Dave Nuss jamming with Kalacakra while modulated sirens peal like headhunter horns. As the piece progresses computer tones w/a weird retro-futurist aspect start to take over, as if we’re coasting right into the heart of the machine. A singular release from Kneale that sounds quite unlike anything else in his catalogue. Recommended.