Limited edition of 500 split LPs complete with unique individually hand-painted/silk-screened sleeves and glossy full-colour insert. Cousins Of Reggae follow-up their killer Our Mouth CD with a side of post Harry Pussy avant garage scorch that's listed as “History And Prehistory Of Hudson's Bay In Five Parts” and reads like a massively updated rundown of variously torched scum/noise strategies as applied to skateboarding-carrying avant gardists with a penchant for the slackest aleatoric metal. Unbelievable. Mouthus side is just phenomenally dozed, two huge sqouching roars of marshmallow-heavy damage that work hiccupping hillbilly rhythms into the kind of ferocious wall-of-mong previously erected by committed actionists like Hijokaidan, Hasil Adkins and Royal Trux. Too much. Highest possible recommendation.

"'Pussygut' is an old western slang term for the violin or fiddle - as the strings used to be made from cat intestines. "PussyGutt" is the duo of Blake Green and Brittany McConnell from Boise, Idaho. They have created a distinctive flavor of outsider "doom" with unique instrumentation that coincidentally features LOTS of violin (Brittany is a classically trained violinist), along with synths, gongs, bowed cymbals, crystal goblets, organ, drums, clay pots, forest sounds, ducks, various electronics, tons of feedback and humming bass-amp, and as if all that's not enough there's a secret weapon up their collective sleeve - the TRACTOR!!. The group holed up for nine months in their studio experimenting and composing the four side-long pieces for this double album. They are joined on Sea of Sand by Seattle's Garek Druss (of A Story of Rats and Ear Venom) as collaborator/3rd member. Garek contributed his experiments with field recordings, repetition, electronics, and sound-collage to the proceedings. Also appearing is Chad Lefler of Seattle legends Old Cloud throwing down some heavy-duty amplifier worship. The music? Extremely HEAVY. Deeply WEIRD. A friend of the band coined the term "soundtrack aficianarcoleptics" to describe who this album will most appeal to and indeed the entire album is largely cinematic in its approach. The "riffs" & drums mostly stay hidden in their caves, venturing outside on a few brief excursions to catch some moonlight and provide punctuation to the drones and other assimilated madness. Limited edition of 550 hand-assembled copies. Packaged in heavy-duty gatefold sleeves with four spraymounted panels that were custom offset-printed on silver stock with two coats of black ink for extra darkness. Full size inserts printed on vellum paper. Specially mastered for maximum bass presence on vinyl by Mell Dettmer who has mastered projects for SUNN 0))/Boris, Earth, Asva, etc." - OESB.

"Squim, a.k.a. Chris Phillips, is an obsessive recordist living in Portland, Oregon. In the 90's he was very active in the underground mail art and tape trading scene - running the "Circle X" label out of Salt Lake City and releasing several well received cassettes on the Bobby J. label. This album will be his debut on the vinyl format and was chosen as being the standout from among a half dozen other unreleased albums of recent recordings. On Zephyrus, Squim blends repeating melodic motifs with his meticulously collaged noise/dronescapes. This is a limited edition release of 350 copies - each cover is a unique color monoprint hand printed by Squim and spraymounted, back covers are a photocopy paste-on. More about the album Zephyrus - in Squim's own words: 'Lets see, recorded most of it in the spring of 2003... it's constructed from a combination of field recordings and 'studio sessions' where I would bounce the tracks, pan them, speed them up, slow them down and add filters and reverb. they were also run through a feedback loop in the mixer with various effects on a first-generation korg kaos pad. for instruments I played an electric guitar, a harmony acoustic guitar, a casio cz-101 and a casio sk1. for the field recordings I used a minidisk (that fell apart during the sessions) with a stereo mic... a fisher price tape recorder, and a hand held tape recorder... while doing the studio sessions I would also record what I was playing on the tape decks then later position them around the room for playback... I would ping pong these sounds back and forth several times. I was also experimenting with the feedback that occurred from layering the same sound over itself multiple times. during the recording I was reading a lot of weird sci-fi, horror and ghost stories. particularly Algernon Blackwood, Clark Ashton Smith, Arthur Machen, M.R. James and William Hope Hodgson. these influenced me to try and capture a sense of cosmic dread contrasted by everyday surroundings. "Trial by Cobra" and "Doppelganger" are references to 'The Blind Owl', a Persian novel by Sadegh Hedayat'" - OESB.

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.

"In late November & early December of 2006 the Portland Bike Ensemble played a series of concerts in Japan -- ten shows in seven different cities. This record features highlights from that tour. Side A is the complete performance from a Buddhist temple in Tokyo, and on the flip are excerpts from shows in Fukuoka, Kitakyushu, and Kyoto. Limited edition of 200 copies, spraymounted covers." – OESB.

Debut full-length vinyl from this Northern California “free drift” unit, with one massive track per side. If you caught these guys live on their recent tour you’ll know that their sound has developed from nascent drone rock moves into a more fully orchestrated and all-enveloping free music behemoth, one that crosses sophisticated washes of slowed-down narcotic synth with waves of orchestral machine noise and repeating rhythmic structures. This is the best document of their stunning live form thus far, two epic tracks that feel fully-scored and deliberately sculpted but that capture the anything-can-happen energy and higher-minded free music spontaneity of the group at its best. Comes packaged in deluxe gatefold sleeves with silkscreened art by Nate Nelson of Mouthus/Religious Knives/Crazy Dreams Band. Edition of 470 copies.

Okay, so if anything his cover art is getting even uglier (if that was actually fucking possible) but I gotta say, this second vinyl LP from the notorious Zac Davis of Lambsbread may even top his previous Olde English Spelling Bee side in terms of wasted basement oblivion style. Back when Sky Juice were sticking out CD-Rs on Maim & Disfigure the label would pretend that they were actually an undiscovered all-black power trio and this album really has the feel of those early sides, with that Detroit-in-flames/Jungle Rot urban violence style down to a tee. But it’s also shot through with weird song sketches, riffs that go nowhere, totally catchy two minute boogie breakdowns and the kind of confusing organisational logic that is most associated with the early Royal Trux sides. The album is dedicated to Andrew Davis film of the same name. Edition of 375 copies with paste-on sleeves.

New solo work from Sam Meringue, aka Explorers, Matrix Metals, half of Yoga et al. Flashback Repository is a crude Xerox-psych take on James Ferraro and Spencer Clark’s Hypnagogic memory-recovery process, positing a universal storehouse where all of the waste consciousness of humanity resides. It sounds like abandoned machinery heard through a fog of tape hiss and dreamtone, with keyboards spooling loops of wasteland texture beneath hallucinatory vocal forms and far-away melodies. The feel is closest, perhaps, to the early Skaters style, with peaking drones jump-cutting into keyboard carousels and flickering dreammachine actions, all rendered in a way that sounds as if its beaming across the decades, from the future as much as the past. A reissue of an obscure cassette from Meringue’s Outer Limits Collective, the LP comes with a stapled together booklet featuring ‘explanatory’ text. Edition of 425 copies. Highly recommended. 

Gotta admit that this latest LP from OESB – co-released with Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never’s Upstairs label - had me pretty confused for the first few spins. Post-Hypnagogic in day-glo capitals, it seemed to be channelling 1980s Prince via Scritti Polliti, Belle & Sebastian, Oneohtrix Point Never, African soukous, the most emotive synth-pop... all via a wonky production that seemed like a pop overhaul of the aesthetics laid down by James Ferraro and Daniel Lopatin. And I hate fucking Prince and cheap 1980s pop, etc. But over the past few days I’ve found myself obsessively coming back to it, a little less guilty every time, marvelling at its primitive sophistication, the way it lifts hooks from the most occluded parts of your brain, the non-consensual sections, informed by something that goes beyond simple ‘taste’. Plus, I gotta hand it to whoever the shady character behind Autre Ne Veut is, he has a way with naggingly hypnotic melodies and high vocal hysterics that is hard to resist, positing a weirdo soundworld where bedroom experimentation and the aesthetics of freak are married to epic pop moves and power ballads. Perhaps its closest cousin is Richard Youngs’ Beyond The Valley Of Ultrahits, that same combination of homemade construction and pop star ambition and a track like “Soldier” could easily have come out of the Youngs catalogue, with an unaffected Anglophile vocal over smeared and squonked electronics and drum machines. The slower tracks are the real gravy, however, with testifying soul-boy vocals over swampy slo-mo beats and soaring electronics that conflate basement and stadium modes to singular effect. Either way, it ‘feels’ like a landmark H-Pop release and is certainly one of the oddest sides of underground/overground confusion to come out of the OESB catalogue. Highly recommended?

Debut full-length from this duo/quartet who play euphoric fuzz pop inspired by UK noise like The Jesus & Mary Chain, Pastels, My Bloody Valentine, Meat Whiplash et al but given a basement USA overhaul so that it touches on the less jam/more song focussed end of the Twisted Village catalogue. 

Three-song teaser for the new Ducktails album, with demos and home-recorded versions of album tracks. Nice countrified folk feel cut with a breezy International Pop Underground aesthetic and a version of “Art Vandelay” that has been a recent Real Estate live staple. 

New single from Pigeons in the wake of their OESB LP, psychedelic chanson stylings cut with baroque folk moves and an inventive production. Two songs recorded in 2009. 

New LP from Stellar Om Source aka Christelle Gualdi, compiling and re-mastering selected tracks from what was originally a limited 3xCD-R set that we stocked at VT way back in the day. The renewed attention she’s been getting recently isn’t surprising: unlike many of the her ‘new age synth’ contemporaries, Gualdi has some advanced technique, playing rippling, almost Alice Coltarne-esque arpeggios of pure liquid tone set in deep cosmo-settings that have an ecstatic future jazz feel while tapping into the H-Pop style of timbres and modes salvaged from 1980s synth soundtracks and 1970s keyboard ritual. Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never makes a guest appearance on “Rites Of Fusion”. Full colour cover art by Gualdi and a free download. Recommended. 

“Debut 4-song 7" by Brooklyn via L.A. mystery popsters with connections to Raw Thrills, Insted, Outer Limits Recordings, James Ferraro, & Luke Perry.... features Basement Jaxx/Michael Jackson/Sparks pop aspirations filtered through a Haunted Graffiti homemade aesthetic...” – OESB.

Excellent step into mutant pop from Sam Meringue (Matrix Metals/Lamborghini Crystal/Flashback Repository et al) that works as the perfect fluorescent compliment to James Ferraro’s Night Dolls... LP, extending H-Pop formulas into hallucinatory MTV zones.