New honey-thick stew of electronics, phased vocals, long lines of human breath and strings tuned to the heavens from this always electrifying Finnish margin-walker, here joined by members of Vapaa. Limited.

New live working from the free NZ trio who levitated a whole bunch of beards with their last release on Metonymic. This one features Richard Whyte, Rick Jensen and Dean Brown live on 04/12/04 in Wellington, New Zealand and works blasted skeleton forms from low-level percussive shuffle, slow hurricanes of malformed tone, pitched wine glasses and saxophone squawk. Parts of this sound like a huge abandoned galleon being slowly blown to pieces by slow-motion tides. Fans of AMM, NNCK and even later Shadow Ring might well wanna smoke on these bones.

Major investigation of various occult topographical aspects of London from a duo of deep-listening Australians, Joel Stern (field recordings, manipulated objects, electronics) and Anthony Guerra (guitar and electronics). Guerra’s guitar embraces some beautifully mesmeric loops and microtone-laden bow-work while field recordings of birds and frozen autumn air situate the whole of the proceedings in some kind of reverse English capital. With titles like “Old Whitechapel Silence” this would work as the perfect zoned soundtrack to your next re-reading of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell. Recommended.

"The hyper-energetic Sam Hamilton is almost solely responsible for the currently booming Auckland experimental music scene, organising shows and festivals on what seems an almost daily basis. He is also no slouch in the performing arena himself, playing home made and/or deconstructed electronics and instruments to produce dense drones and evocative arpeggios... Chris O'Connor is for my money the most exciting and inspired drummer in New Zealand. A stalwart of the NZ improv and fire-music scenes he is also the only drummer I have ever witnessed pulling off a convincing drone performance- on drums! I could watch him play all night. 'Tidal Dee's and Harboured Dum's' is a soundtrack Hamilton and O'Connor created for the experimental feature film 'Anguish', by Tim Van Dammen. Featuring Hamilton on psyche guitar and electronics and O'Connor on drums it verges on Haino-esque territory as it takes one on a seat of the pants ride through the purplest realms of ecstatic rock." - PA

New album from Anthony Milton’s Clay Man In The Well project, recorded during a series of practices for a show with the equally great Metal Rouge. Here Milton uses banjo, SK1, Monotron synth, vocals, pedals and mixer to evoke a blurry widescreen atmosphere that combines fast smears of almost orchestral detail over haunted wraithlike vocals and a constantly peaking atmosphere. Shaun describes it as having a Loveless-meets-Popol-Vuh style and that feels as close as you’re going to get to its dizzying devotional appeal. 

Cool new DVD from Pseudo Arcana that features a selection of films put together by Anthony Milton using raw footage culled from You Tube by using the search terms “historical New Zealand Super 8 film”. The resultant visuals have a distant memory vague appeal with a ton of surreal historical detail, airshows, folk festivals, landscapes... all combining in strange abstract forms while Hi-Asobi – the trio of Milton, Peter Wright and David Khan - generate power drones and eerie blues-inflected abstractions that add to overall dream/reverie feel. No region, all players compatible. Comes with a free digital download of the sonics.

Edition of only 50 copies hand-cut lathe with insert and download documenting some insane pipe and drum music recorded live in the field by Anthony Milton: incredible degree of out of body hyperventilating going on here, with crude pipe stylings huffing all the way to unconsciousness while drums batter our ritual tattoos and wild get-down stylings. A side was recorded at a 36 hour non-stop street fiesta in the village of Sorata in the High Andes while the flip was at an overnight bacchal in a bamboo hut in the village of San Miguel del Bala in the Amazon basin. Line this one up to next to an Albert Ayler boot and your favourite Vibracathedral Orchestra CD-R for maximal brain rearrangement. 

Pretty much everyone who hear the swanky double cassette release from the NZ duo of Anthony Milton (lap steel guitar/banjo/electronics) and Bill Wood (lap steel guitar/electronics) was floored and the response has been so great that Anthony has gone back and reissued their debut double CD-R set in an exclusive art edition run in oversize folders with stapled-in art book: Birdcatcher take off on a kind of post-Charalambides/Scorces sanctified steel trip, factoring in great fogs of reverb, hovering psychedelic ghost tones, endlessly sustained single-note violence and at atmosphere that is somewhat akin to Reverend Louis Overstreet plays the Hermann Nitsch outer space songbook. Using nothing but a buncha modified electric strings and some cracked electronics Birdcatcher usurp blues form to hymn dead planets, playing in a slow-motion railroad style that trades crossroads for spaceways. Spectacularly great, tiny run, highly recommended.