Amongst connoisseurs of revelatory/off the map private press sides, the recordings of Mark Tucker have long provided a functional model of the genre at its most beautifully fucked. Tucker’s second album, 1983’s In The Sack, was an apocalyptic/dystopian concept album that centred on the American postal system and that sounded something like a cross between a teenage Van Dyke Parks and a slightly less disobedient Half Japanese. But his debut album, Batstew, released on his own Tetrapod Spools label in 1975, is widely regarded as his masterpiece. The whole concept for this fantastically unlikely recording seems to have been birthed via the conflation of a bunch of Tucker’s obsessions at the time, namely his car (which he referred to as ‘The Bat’) and his “She”, Eva Bataszew, an early girlfriend with whom Tucker had a relationship “riddled with paranormal phenomena”. The death of that relationship would later contribute to the deterioration of Tucker’s mental health and three bouts of hospitalisation for severe depression. The album was released in two runs of 100 copies each, including one personalised edition for Eva, where the title read Bataszew. “She never commented on it,” Tucker relates in the newly penned liner notes, “except to say that she played it for her cousin and he ‘didn’t get it’”. Tucker’s parents were similarly unresponsive. His father “never commented on any aspect of it but several years later, my stepmother asked me if I had written a song about a homosexual relationship, so apparently she had heard it. My mother, who had dreamed of me becoming a concert pianist – the next Rubinstein or Horowitz – hated Batstew in its entirety from the first minute to the last. She never wished to own a copy. After hearing the master tape of the proposed album, she told me ‘You’re selling your craziness’. I replied, ‘So was Beethoven.’”

Another bewitchingly beautiful solo album from Samara Lubelski (Tower Recordings/Hall Of Fame/Metabolismus/Sonora Pine/MV et al), that moves away from the tranced instrumental brainbeams of her In The Valley album on Eclipse and instead re-visits the acid chanteuse moves of her first De Stijl album, The Fleeting Skies. The arrangements are beautifully positioned between classic baroque pop ala Byrds/Love/Left Banke/Montage, handmade basement moves and early morning Lower East Side comedowns. Samara's beautifully breathless vocals sound like they're being whispered straight into your ear and the backing band are a peach, including contributions from Hamish Kilgour of NZ garage legends The Clean, Matt Heyner of The No-Neck Blues Band, Christian Frederickson of Rachels and Cynthia Nelson. Limited vinyl edition with stuck on coloured sleeves in classic De Stijl-style. Highly recommended.

Second solo release from Samara Lubelski of Tower Recordings, Metabolismus, Sonora Pine, and Hall Of Fame. A collection of otherworldly song-forms that touch on all sorts of choice action, from icy French pop through spaced harmonies that recall The United States Of America, post-Velvets/Chelsea Girl balladry and frail, idiosyncratic basement forms that are pure loner. Recorded in NYC and Germany, features guest appearances from Tim Barnes, PG Six and Cynthia Nelson. Highly recommended.

Brand new full-length recording from the duo of Matthew Bower (Skullflower/Total/Sunroof et al) and Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards/Zaimph/GHQ) features a more rock-reverent take on the kind of vertical screens of impossibly detailed overtone that defined their earlier albums, with Marcia's viola slow-burning fluttering afterimages of neon spirals deep into the air while Bower's guitar/microphone worship generates repeat-ascensions of overloaded ecstasy tone. Something grittier, more immediately tactile, that makes this their most dramatically meat-based orbit of hallucinated space/time vectors to date. Highly recommended.

CD reissue of this amazing side: Jakob Olausson is best known, if at all, for his sub-radar activities with Sweden's Joshua Jugband 5 (check yr Slippytown back catalogue for more of that brand of boo) but this, his first solo LP, is a whole other bucket of flesh. Moonlight Farm is one of the most beautifully nocturnal and disconcertingly intimate broadcasts to make it out of the heart of the wood since Joshua's Gold Cosmos. The overall atmosphere has the same kind of early electric feel as Matthew Valentine's Maximum Arousal recordings, while Olausson's evocatively double-tracked vocals move from a weighted down Skip Spence/Ben Chasny hybrid to a pro-denim and leather Leonard Cohen (or does that make him Jim Morrison?). His songs cross endless tranced dirges with drones that are so lunar they illuminate the entire horizon and huge distorto-smears of backing vox that sound like tiny fists crushing the light from stars. Some of the instrumentals here are so evocatively conceived - beautifully reconciling handmade DIY traditions and higher-minded bliss - that they sound positively Japanese, with a track like "The Wind Combs Her Hair" almost passing for early Che-SHIZU. But it's the songs you'll keep coming back too, elegiac teleports to the fringes of a whole other evocatively conceived universe, where every breath births reverberant shadows and the map of yr desires reads like a mirror of the constellations. From one loner to another, this is everything that the phrase "private press" conjures up and more. A modern classic. Highest recommendation

Ed Askew cut one of the best and most obscure LPs in the original ESP-Disk's vague rock/folk/freak series, issued eponymously and since reissued as Ask The Unicorn, before apparently dropping off the edge of his world. Years later, thanks to detective work by - naturally - Mr Clint Simonson of the De Stijl imprint, it turned out that not only was Askew still breathing but he had actually recorded a follow-up to his ESP disk in 1970 that had lain in the can for decades. Originally released as a limited vinyl edition by Simonson himself, Little Eyes blew even his revered ESP side to ribbons and stands as one of the most magical outsider/freak artefacts to ever escape the prodigious gravity of the decade in which it was birthed. Askew has a highly idiosyncratic vocal style that is equal parts quizzical bubble-gum chewing kind on shrooms and doe-eyed real people Richard Brautigan character. Perhaps the closest comparison would be to Tom Rapp or Judee Sill's old buddy Tommy Peltier. His instrumental conceptions certainly owe a massive debt to Dylan circa 64/65 - who the fuck didn't - especially his spine-tingling harmonica work but it's the beautiful arc of the songs that will keep you coming back, the way he combines rough, fluffed performances with eye-watering lyrical sentiments, heartbreaking phrasing and weird, clunky chords played on a 'Marin tiple'. If you ever dug the whole late-60s freak-folk fall-out as documented by Pearls Before Swine, Bleib Alien, Tim Buckley, Fugs, Roots Of Madness et al you are gonna crease. Simply put, one of the most beautifully cracked singer-songwriter albums of a timeless age. Only the hardest of hearts could resist it. This new CD edition comes with six incredible bonus tracks culled from various radio broadcasts across 1970 and 71 and liners by Byron Coley. Highly recommended.

First time reissue of this very obscure free music LP, saxophonist Paul Flaherty’s debut recording, originally released privately in 1978. Orange were a garage band that existed between the years 1975 and 1977 and featured Flaherty on bells, alto sax and voice, Bob Laramie on electric bass, Barry Greika on electric guitar, trumpet and fife and a dude called Hobbit (“long red beard and really long red hair in case you’re wondering” sez Paul in the liners). The group’s identity fluxed between a jazz group that played heads and then went on out, a fusion of various electric and acoustic high-energy strategies and all-out totally improvisatory Godhead, all cut by a buncha heads shooting in various mutually-obliterating directions. The recording session for their LP was their most evolved shot at all-out freedom moves and it doesn’t really sound like anything else from the era/ilk other than what you might figure was going on in various basements amongst the kinda Americans that dug rock ‘n’ roll, free jazz, total artistic liberty and probably a buncha drugs too. The CD comes with extensive – great – liners from Paul and also features Dan and Dave Flaherty sitting in on bongos and steel drums respectively on a buncha tracks. Recommended.

Unlikely follow-up to an even less likely debut: In The Sack was Tucker’s second privately-pressed release following his legendary Batstew LP, a cracked, obsessional classic that combined Industrial field recordings of car engines with weird Barret/Ayers/Wilson-esque paeans to teenage perversion and hermetic personal tropes. It still stands as one of the greatest outsider/real people American privates. In the wake of Batstew, Tucker’s mental health suffered and after a couple of breakdowns he changed his name to T. Storm Hunter and recorded In The Sack in 1982, an apocalyptic / dystopian concept album that centered on the American postal system that sounds something like a cross between a teenage Van Dyke Parks and a slightly less disobedient Half Japanese. The sonics are little more song-based that Batstew but there’s still plenty of goofy avant action with found-sound, electronic cut-ups and weird garage-pop miniatures all soaked in that classic hermetic basement vibe that made Batstew such an essential album.

Debut album from this London-based girl trio who make the kind of glorious no-fi avant punk noise that would combine the melodic garage doofs of Dum Dum Girls and Vivian Girls with the post-ESP Disk exuberance of the whole Circuit Des Yeux/Cro Magnon scene. Suckdog and The Shaggs are the twin poles around which much of the contemporary DIY girl punk kinda hangs and their lessons have obviously been fully internalized by this bunch. The drums have a particular stagger to them that makes it feel like the main formal model is the percussion break during “Who Are Parents” and Pens have a similarly attention-deficit style to the best of The Shaggs material, with choruses beamed from Venus that inexplicably give way to droning casiotone breaks and cranky fuzz-guitar ballads that once might’ve been Azalia Snail taking off into the destructo style of Half Japanese. The whole deal is rendered with such infectious élan that it’s almost impossible to resist and with such an impeccable feel for the aesthetics of basement noise it’s hard to believe that they could possibly be British. But they fucking are. So bring it on.

Excellent new cultic psych rock from an ensemble out of Minneapolis. This self-titled album is the group’s second and it’s an inspired amalgam of Spacemen 3-styled fuzz guitar, peaking violin drones and vocal hysteria. The group’s approach is directly comparable to a buncha Euro-zone freaks, specifically Amon Duul 2 (with female vocals that touch on Renate Knaup’s stellar work on Yeti) and Comus. The vocals occupy the hypnotic centre, with plenty of extended tongue, while the violin and guitar provide the steam, generating monolithic gravities ala Cale’s work on the first Velvets LP and – particularly – Simon House’s work with High Tide. They succeed in beaming all of these historical forms far into the future with a focus on the jam that is obsessively minimal and explosively psychedelic. If you’re tired of dudes in coloured sunglasses soundtracking Top Gun then this is the perfect balm, wild psychedelic ritual straight from the source. Recommended.

Much-anticipated album from this ‘mysterious’ London duo who work in a liminal zone that’s somewhere between primitive psychedelic ritual, hazy H-Pop and screwed and chopped hip-hop technologies. Find Out What Happens... crosses a selection of re-worked material that originally appeared on their limited to circa 50 copies CD-R S.E.A.L/Acid Elle Vol. 6 that was only available from Volcanic Tongue with new material that pushes further into narcotic electronica with fat basslines and Kraut synth patterns that have a spectral nocturnal aspect that isn’t quite dub and that feels more informed by lo-fi tape stylings and fucked-up computer speakers than Upsetter studio moves. Their cover of Sade’s “Sweetest Taboo” is truly inspired and ranks alongside Daniel Lopatin’s memory vague take on “Lady In Red” as one of the defining H-Pop moments and here it’s given an even deeper bass-heavy mix that makes it sound even more uncanny. Hype Williams seem to be a major lightning rod for the various contagions that are currently mutating underground sound and this is easily their most accomplished statement to date, sounding simultaneously primitive and sophisticated, futuristic and regressive.

Sublime set of downer/primitive female DIY psych soundings in the tradition of Suckdog/Azalia Snail et al from Haley Fohr aka Circuit Des Yeux. Three tracks recorded straight to portastudio for maximal time/space dislocation. 

Beautifully presented unearthing of two previously unreleased live performances from legendary ESP-Disk recording artist and fragile folk spirit/instrument inventor Ed Askew recorded on the David Porter Show on WYBC in November 1969. Can’t think of anyone else outside of Tom Rapp who so beautifully usurped the post-Dylan tradition with wide-eyed hippie heartache and outside stylings. This is a package that looks and sounds great. 

Massively addictive euphoric motorik pop that marries an almost Minimal Man-style electro west coast feel with Sonic Boom’s Spectrum, Neu beats and iconoclastic lead keyboards that have all of the irrepressible mania of prime Klaus Dinger and that will have you grinning and drooling like nothing else this side of the second La Dusseldorf album. The fall-out from Raccoo-oo-oon has birthed a ton of great shit – Ryan Garbes solo album on Hello Sunshine is a particular stone – but this just might be the most ‘satisfying’ satellite to date, with Shawn Reed joined by Garbes and Matt Fenner for the perfect marriage of infinite amphetamine repetition and heavenly pop hits. Almost impossible to resist. Comes with an art book insert. Cool Velvets bootleg style sleeve as well. 

First real full-length from this great Columbia, Missouri group that channel 70s basement rock that combines nods to classic form – Lou Reed, Sweetheart-era Byrds, Royal Trux – with a crude, loose feel and some great, great songs. Wooden Wand is a long-term fan and it’s easy to see why: Jerusalem have a similar way of illuminating and re-birthing singer-songwriter styles with liberal injections of beneath-the-radar form and lessons learned and imported from the fringes of the fucked. Indeed, the arc of their trails also kind of parallels the whole Columbus scene – Gibson Brothers/Bassholes/Mike Rep/Tommy Jay et al – with an ‘insider’ take on rock mores, an intuitive grasp of classic hunch and the ability to marry unforgettable melodies with enough balls and brut to make even the most committed of free-form freaks see the goddamn light. I dunno, this is great, a more countrified Royal Trux, the record Peter Laughner never made... whatever, this sits right *there* and is almost enough to restore your faith in the power of rock-as-rock/song-as-song. Recommended!

New album from Haley Fohr aka Circuit Des Yeux. Her last few releases have been almost perfect articulations of the ESP-Disk singer-songwriter style, with almost Suckdog-scale tape goofs alongside dark communal jams w/a heady cultic edge. Portrait moves more definitively into dark singer-songwriter territory with an atmosphere that could almost be Nico circa the Cale/Eno productions all cut-up with a weightless/devotional aspect that is almost Scorces. Her cover version of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire” situates her music alongside the liminal Americana of US Girls but whereas Megan Remy’s particular brand of magick is channelled via occult 60s pop stylings Circuit Des Yeux seem more kind of  high gothic complete w/downer rural strings that come out of the whole Aryan Sample/Tommy Roundtree school and power vocals ala early Zola Jesus. 

First saw this all-female trio that features Lau Nau, Islaja and Kuupuu back in the day when they toured the UK with Taurpis Tula and Virgin Eye Blood Brothers but this is the first official document of their existence. Hertta Lussu Assa feel like the central transmission point for a bunch of diverse Finnish modes, using toy instruments and keyboards that are as surreal as anything from Tomuttontu but cut with an eerie nocturnal aspect that comes out of the deep forest folk of Kuupuu or even Paivansade. At points the three voices combine in choral wraiths that float above bubbling microtonally-detailed drone in a way that is deeply narcotic. Melancholy music box melodies are situated in the middle-distance above small percussion sounds and subtly bent strings. If you like your femme-fronted folk cut w/dilated drones, broken down piano and wheezing loops then this is pretty much your dream trip. 

Jakob Olausson’s previous album, 2005’s Moonlight Farm remains one of the most exquisite formulations of loner folk ever beamed from a basement in Northern Europe. Morning & Sunrise is its long-time coming follow-up and comes complete with a perfect weirdo Christian/private press style sleeve. The sonics have been slightly upgraded here, with less muzz and a bit more clarity to the arrangements but Olausson still comes over like a post-Silence Bob Desper, singing in a dark, echoing style w/oblivion breathing straight down his neck. Hard to think of anyone who can generate such a blasted atmosphere with nothing but an acoustic guitar and vocals - Joshua Burkett maybe? – while the more ‘rocking’ band based jams come over like the COM side never recorded by Virgin Insanity and with an odd dislocated teen garage feel that could almost be Virgil Caine. If his first record meant anything to you – and I can barely think of anyone who wasn’t sold on it – then this is the stone you’ve been hoping for, doomy, dark, basement-primitive loner folk with enough atmosphere to spook even the most committed solitary. 

Original copies of this very limited LP, released in 2004 w/a beautiful paste-on-sleeve job by De Stijl. Xiao remains one of the most gloriously beautiful early blats from this tribe, with huge fields of percussive heliocentric beauty, punk/modal re-thinks of spirit-huffing axe gliss, supremely lonely country/blues phantoms and some inspired beat satori. Liner notes by Thurston Moore. Highly recommended!