Fantastic limited edition vinyl pressing of this major side from James, also available as a self-released CD-R. Already completely sold out at source. “Multitopia is our reality system,” James writes in the liner notes. “A post 9/11 reality technology in between the frames of data reception. A cross wire into ‘new head’ and necessary evolution upon the impact of the towers”. It feels like a major work from James, the first fully-conceived album to go beyond his initial brain-fried 1980s nightmare culture documentation, reconciling both dystopian and utopian mindsets in a vision of Pan as Multitopia. Body modification, the blurring of sexual persona (via cracked images of James on the back with a modified pair of breasts chilling next to an arcade game) and cyborg intelligences are all recurrent tropes in James’s work but here he explodes them all, with some of the most aggressively nuanced keyboard and drum work of his entire career, kicking off with a full kit sound that sits somewhere between Industrial steel drums and chaos pads then building to an evocative peak that then dissolves into wave after wave of fluxing keyboard drone and oddly looped vocal fragments. The gravity of the music is truly omnivorous, devouring drone, punk, new wave, Industrial and minimal synth modes and spitting them back out as intensely detailed black and white visions of the future now. James somehow manages to interweave vacuous TV announcements and cheap anchor man quips alongside the lucid, microtone rich keyboard work, situating the whole deal in a virtual, godless netherworld with each track a further descent into hell. It is both beautiful and horrifying. A major work from James – no one is doing anything remotely like him. Completely re-mastered and in a run of only 425 copies. Highly recommended.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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! 

Much-anticipated privately-pressed LP from Spencer Clark’s post-Skaters/Monopoly Child Star Searchers organisation, Fourth World Magazine. Presented as a full-colour 12” book with an extensive article by Charles Berlitz, the set is focussed on the spectacle of light abductions, specifically the gathering that took place at Salt Lake City in 1984 where what had previously been perceived as spiritual detritus or non-assimilable aspects of the attendees personalities returned in the form of terrifying light formations that gave way to the arrival of UFOs populated by ‘greys’– or Lams as Kenneth Grant might have it – which in turn were interpreted as manifestations of the attendees’ higher (or what had previously been perceived as ‘lower’ ie ‘merely’ subconscious or libidinous) selves. The attendees then experienced ‘abduction’ by these ‘aliens’, rising up through cones of light which many experienced as a re-entry to the birth canal and a subsequent re-birth that involved a profound realignment with reality through mass ‘hallucination’. Berlitz makes a compelling analysis of the events in his extensive essay accompanied by full colour shots of the visitation as it played out. Clark’s music is some of his most sublime and rigorously worked-over, starting out with loops that seem to convulse in on themselves again and again, creating weird vortexes of tone that would confuse any kind of linear musical development, literally killing time dead w/all of the magisterial beauty of Terry Riley’s all-night flights. As the album progresses various down-tuned reptilian vocals start to dominate, rising above the phantom exotica and the swampland settings, sounds that seem to act more on an atavistic level than a fully conscious/rational one. Each track seems keyed to a particular phase of the abduction cycle, finally giving way to what may well be Spencer’s most beautiful creation to date, the almost side-long “Spectacle Of Light Festival” that combines luminous, obsessively detailed smears of phantom tone with cycling, organic rhythms and a subtly ascending dynamic that is quietly euphoric and as startlingly otherworldly as earlier classics like Vodka Soap’s Un Chand Pyramidelier, mimicking the final ascension/transformation using constantly fluctuating frequencies situated in the kind of hallucinatory deep-space environs that would combine the ecstatic lost-in-space feel of Double Leopards and Taj Mahal Travellers with the dissolving tapes of William Basinski and even aspects of Brian Wilson’s sound art circa Smile . Eerily beautiful, massively ambitious, another candidate for record of the year. 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. 

Aces-up collaboration between Spencer Clark of The Skaters/Monopoly Child Star Searchers/Fourth World Magazine et al and Mark McGuire of Emeralds. Inner Tube presents a series of hallucinated soundtracks to straight-to-video surf movies as a virtual reification of the true teen sound of the boys of summer. Clark produces while playing keyboards, drums, vocals and samples while McGuire contributes guitar, bass, keyboards and drums but most of all this is a guitar record. McGuire’s tone and overall attack is radically different from his work with Emeralds, with Spencer’s production giving it a euphoric firecracker edge as he rips out endlessly wild solos that hang ten on wave after wave of fuzz. As with alla Spencer’s material there’s also a contrary melancholy aspect, the feel of summer ending and youth long since disappeared and a bunch of the tracks are dedicated to tragic teen sports stars like Catch Vicelli, Mark Richards and Michael Doames. The A side pretty much rips it up from start to finish with that amazing fuzztone lighting up the sky while the flip moves into a more muted/sunset vibe with aspects of the first few Neu records married to infinitely riffing keyboards and McGuire’s epic fuzz-saturated testimonials to endless yesterdays in the sun. Co-released between Spencer’s Pacific City imprint and McGuire’s Wagon label, the LP comes with a large full-colour poster of the duo that demands pride of place above the fireplace and a printed colour inner with classic daffy sleevenotes: “A guy from Hemet meets a young girl with a serious lust for Motorcross. He’s been dumped by his longtime High School Hottie, and she’s just fed up with her dull, toid-like insurance salesman boyfriend. The two train together all day, making jumps from dirt mounds and climbing up hills Wheeli style. At the end of the day they get to the top of the highest peak and watch the sun set...” More than exceeding what it set out to do, this is one of the most euphoric psychedelic guitar records of either of these guys’ careers and the ultimate realisation of Spencer Clark’s vision of the nightside of summertime. Totally addictive, impossibly affecting, simply cannot recommend this enough!