Another classic slice of apocalyptic private press garage from the darkest entries in the Shdwply catalogue. Both sides focus on the moodier aspects of their debut with an A-side that sounds like This Kind Of Punishment plays The Doors “The Crystal Ship” with a brass section straight outta Notorious Byrd Brothers. The dislocated backing vocals, heavy cultic atmosphere and killer acid guitar add to the whole wiped-out/west coast ’69 atmosphere.  Seriously need a full length from these guys. All VT copies come on limited non-metallic gold vinyl. Highly recommended.

Edition of 100 cassettes from this mysterious group featuring members of Hype Williams. Deep space organ and keyboard work refracted through a vacuum of slow spooling static. A spooked atmosphere that somehow reminds of the Two Sisters LP and cassette as much as a more eccentric take on William Basinski’s loop work or early Asmus Tietchens. Easy to imagine Matt Krefting and Scott Foust toasting this one at 3am somewhere drunk in New England. Recommended. 

This is massively confusing: reputed to be the work of two female in-patients at the GCRC UNC Hospital in North Carolina, in fact recorded there in room 2233 in 2009, Birth Of An Older, Much More Ugly Christ is a dark, minimal, grotesquely fucked-up noise/action piece with few parallels. Not much actually happens; the sound of static gradually rises in ferocity, what sounds like an amplified air conditioner drone is slowly submerged by the sound of storms, screaming Industrial tones are heard through a fog of worn tape, a brokedown organ stutters somewhere in the background, but the effect is devastatingly oppressive. A claustrophobic black hole of a record, it’s hard to find parallels but perhaps the early monomaniacal metal-on-metal work of Andrew Chalk’s Ferial Confine, Keiji Haino’s torrential Forest Of Spirits, or aspects of Nord’s first LP come closest. Easily one of the most singular ‘noise’ recordings to have passed these ears in some time, this demands to be heard. “This shit is DARK…  and I’m not talking about some fucking “I sleep during the day” dark…I’m not talking some “Cannibal Corpse shit - I’m a fucking mutilator” dark…. And I’m not talking “I’m a noise dude into black metal” dark…  I’m talking total fucking END OF THE WORLD shit…like…everyone is going to die and it’s gonna be fucking TERRIBLE. Recorded in 2009 by sisters Roxann and Rachal Spikula while in a hospital doing some fucked up health study where all they could drink was Shasta for like 2 weeks.  NO JOKE!  Master tape arrived wrapped in a duct taped hospital gown with my address written on it in sharpie. Side A:  The tape becomes unpaused and kicks in with a menacing organ drone that mutates into the lo-fi skree of an empty room, eventually becoming a swirling abyss of tape hiss and the sound of nothing happening in a hospital… Distant creaks, buzz, and hums littered with hiss and garbage sound layered into a very unsettling frenzied drone. Side B:  A crunchy noise inferno that eventually leads us to what sounds to me like being in outer space watching the earth exploding.  As you watch everything we know of destroyed, a saddening descending synth wave appears, buried by blasts of destroyed earth.  It ends… and you are disturbed. Limited to 300 copies.  Pitch black vinyl with pitch black labels. Heavy duty black and silver silkscreened covers with the ‘Hanson Droll Flaps’ Take a break from yer most recent mediocre synth bliss out tape and take a trip back to the real fucking world…where everything fucking SUCKS.” – Aaron Dilloway. Highly recommended.

Edition of 100 cassettes from Miles Devens aka Ignatz, with a charged set of mystery-soaked acid folk and iconoclastic electric blues that join the dots between Mark Fry, Sterling Smith and the revenant form of your favourite ghost.

Unlikely reissue of this obscure cassette-only release that originally came out on legendary UK DIY label, It’s War Boys, home to The Homosexuals, El Voag, Milk From Cheltenham, Sara Goes Pop et al. Brillans was a central member of that collective and this cracked 1981 side is the perfect distillation of the UK DIY aesthetic, with a series of songs, instrumentals and sound works that combine the subterranean rock style of Swell Maps with home-recorded rants, punk-pop instants, outer space drones and doomy synth. Looking forward to a bunch of weirdo DIY releases from this new off-shoot of Alga Marghen. Edition of 265 copies complete with an essay by Ed Baxter and a 1982 interview with Brillans from Teen Arts magazine. Highly recommended. 

Beautiful cover version of the title track from Oneohtrix Point Never’s Mego LP with Antony Johnson on vocals and Daniel Lopatin on piano. B-side features a remix from Fennesz. Wow. 

“The deaf one from Usurper steps out and is more mysterious than the photic sneeze. Garbled minimalism might not be your bag, but how about listening to a wino using chopsticks to try and pick up scuttling insects? Or an overworked sous chef having a mental breakdown in the kitchen and living out his John Bonham fantasy with whatever comes to hand? Or maybe you get the horn at the sound of some deluded needle dick boring through the layers of an elephant skull in the mistaken belief that inside there is a sickly beverage that promises mega girth? Not enough? Well shit almighty, you even get two Black Flag 'covers'. I will let old cloth ears himself explain...” – Dylan Nyoukis. “the script wi the Flag hings was that i wanted to disable the words in the same way Usurper disables instruments. take summat away to make 'em work in new ways. i double tracked my voice: one speaking only vowels, t'other just consonants and let 'em crash together to make new sounds/unwords. get me?” – Ali Robertson. 

“We had big plans me and Ms Chen, she came armed with her beast of a cello, bows strung with the finest Lhasa Apso hair and a case full of electronics. I brought scruffy violin and box full of junk and springs, but as the night progressed something took hold of us both, and it was decided at the last moment that this should be a straight up vocal duet. Sometimes slurping and delirium can hit the spot.” – Dylan Nyoukis. 

“Latest solo delve from Sarah Albury, one time lank in the tribal yawn fest Leopard Leg who found redemption through homebrew & The Polly Shang Kuan Band. Here she dollops up the goods into a acoustic fog and gets you, the listener, primed. Witness screwy lopsided keyboard & backwards jabber, steaming overdubbed throat drones, sit down wonk out, brain enema electronics and tape mumbo jumbo, basically one womans sounds of fact and fiction. Now I command you go forth and froth.”- Dylan Nyoukis. 

“My good friend Ian Murphy once told me that if I wanted to rid myself of the terrible headache brought on by 'Glo-Fi Beach Boy Bellends' I needed to ingest more 'necro-acoustics', and at the time I am ashamed to say i just wrote it off as more wine fueled Guilford jaw grind, but low and behold, after spinning the new Dog Lady smut for two days straight, if i aint fucking cured of them fucking new age blues, yessir!! This disk travels some, his violin playing goes from desolate and unsettling too rabid and vacillating. All beefed out with bouts of grotified tape and electronic wheeze and pulse. All in all Dog Lady conjure up the kind of shit that reminds us our ancestors were just a bunch of hungry, sponge larvae, so swing that from your family tree, headscratcher.” – Dylan Nyoukis. 

Some weirdo magnetic tape dupster find, reassembled by Keith Fullerton Whitman into a acidfied Bruhin-esque beastly smell. “None of this gibberish, which seems to have been made mainly with half-depressed pause, fast-forward and rewind buttons (and maybe a half-depressed Albanian cobbler), have any titles, so let me suggest a few: "Butt.Er.Fl.Eyes," "Camel Nad Spit," "Looka Mi Puddy (version)," "Borg 9," "Sitting on the Harpsichord Watching all the Frogs Go By," "The Crepitation Contest (pts 7-10)," "Paddling the Dinosaur," "Stiffened Argyle Dangler," "Rooster in a Juicer," and "Syd Barrett's Series of Unfortunate Furniture Collapses." All kidding aside, I don't have the slightest idea what kind of sustained panic attack might have caused this record. Maybe it was an overdose of mint snuff and a pickled egg enema in tinkly-winkly land that leaked out this gooey crust. Your goose is as good as mine.” – Nagoski

One Track from the Kommissar, two track from Mama Baer and three tracks from Blood Stereo, thats six tracks of prime 'whodunnit'? “One for audio vérité aficionados. A three-way split that highlights different approaches to marital equilibrium, just ahead of the forthcoming Channel 4 Wife Swap programme. Mama Baer knows what's what - she's got things to do, so she sends the Kommissar down the pub with his mates. The boys get drunk, much laughter, singing and general horseplay, then back to his pal Trev's place to listen to some of his old Anal Probe compilation tapes. Mama hates all that stuff, but uses the time alone in the house to plug in her guitar and holler her own long-ass hymns to hysteria. A bit of me-time and all is rosy. Blood Stereo have a different approach to conjugals. They believe the family that plays together stays together, so they never do anything apart. I think there's some sort of digestive tract "concept" going on here. You can hear Dylan's bowels rumbling as the first part of the triptych unfolds. They need to eat. Poor old Karen - she nips out for some tofu and possible peace and quiet but Dylan follows her with his minidisk and small collection of imported bird-calls. Last part is a post-prandial take on the opener - the bowels are still very much in evidence, but this time sated. You can almost smell their tiny flat. Thank christ there are no more editions of Excreting Youth planned.” - Neil Campbell

Sublime weirdo Japanese underground moves from Koji Arakawa and co aka Malcosbaba/Malucosbaba. This new self-released CD-R (their third to date) comes in a tiny hand-lettered run and features some stupe quizzical/clean avant blues played on electric and acoustic guitar and loose/wonky knitting needle percussion that has the feel of a wildman Org side crossed with a more streamlined Beefheart/Oshiri Penpenz attack. It has the kind of oddball appeal of the woollier end of the PSF catalogue, Go Hirano, Maher Shalal Hash Baz et al, and there are some beautiful passages of all-out string squeal. But it’s the laidback stoned appeal and the spare loner vibe that’ll keep you coming back for more. Recommended. 

Brand new second self-released album from this enigmatic Japanese underground unit, with stumpy instrumentals for snare-kick, percussion and ginchy acid guitar that sound something like Tori Kudo's early Rough Trade tribute band's inspired re-think of Harry Partch's Gate 5 catalogue. Ranges from Mayo Thompson-esque miniatures through unaccompanied vocal passages that sound like praying to The Godz and some super-primitive Beefheart/Oshiri Penpenz style fuzzing blues. "This is the sound of a highly personal/sparsely-inhabited musical universe and is highly recommended." Comes in hand-made art paper package with stuck-on art. Very limited run.

Limited vinyl pressing of what was originally a 99 copies CD-R on Child Of Microtones, courtesy of Pete Nolan’s Arbitrary Signs imprint. A collection of massively dosed studio recordings, Liberty Rose opens with beams of elegiac solo guitar before dropping into a classic slow-burning jag with puffs of echo/delay damaged vocals melting into hallucinatory afterimages while Erika slides quicksilver runs all the way down your spine. “Crow Jane Environs” has a deep desert feel that could almost be Mu if it wasn’t for Erika’s oracular vocals and MV’s post-Takayanagi soloing. The stark, stripped down version of “Death Is My Friend” features a stunning/chilling vocal performance from Erika and Doc Dunn joins the duo for the last two tracks, with “Out In Space” as dazed and lonely as anything on Skip Spence’s Oar and “Streams” featuring clouds of lucid unison vocals that you could disappear inside. I guess at this stage Child Of Microtones has the same relationship to the Ecstatic Peace releases that Richard Youngs’ No Fans imprint has to his releases on Jagjaguwar, functioning as a repository for some of the most psychedelic, experimental and personal music to escape from the personal stash. And this is a major instalment. Dedicated to Dr Ragtime. Highly recommended.

“Scumfried jazz slop from upstate New York meets charred freak sound murk from the UK. Bolide dish out a subtle bowl fried gimprovised jam, far from a face melter, this is a slow, humid, hypnotic affair, tangled and druggy. While the Rochester octet wheeze out three syrupy big band confusers with plenty of squawk and honk supplemented with electronic sputter and distorted bass wang, not to mention some smoked out odes. Large mouths, larger meals and more unmusic for your wedge.” – Dylan Nyoukis. “NPV are totally and completely unselfconsciously strange & removed from their surroundings both sonically & mentally. Their sounds speak of bizarre & alien places your ears don't usually go.” - John Schoen, Pengo 

New album from the latest incarnation of Pocahaunted, committed to riding the groove all the way into the sun while marrying PiL-styled studio environs with primitive dub shapes and the freak-space of prime Fela Kuti. The vocals still swarm all over the tracks like day-glo clouds but the way they unravel a buncha repeat notes into the kind of progressive vistas that used to vibrate the Ya Ho Wha garage is uniquely potent. “After a six-month hiatus, a complete line-up overhaul, a trip to SXSW, a UK/EURO tour, and a full year-plus of only playing shows and writing songs and amassing totemic objects, finally Pocahaunted return to the recorded realm with their first album since 2008. Time flies when yr having not not fun and all that. Make It Real collects seven of the band’s 2009 live staples for a 40-minute-ish collage of basement body music, garage dub damage, outsider funkadelic sprawl, voodoo rhythm workouts, duo femme soul vocal dynamics, dripping gold sweat, and dream fulfillment. Recorded barefoot and shirtless and direct to tape at Green Machine Studio in summer ’09 by M. Geddes Gengras and featuring guest bamboo sax by jazzmaster Alex Gray (of Dreamcolour/Deep Magic) and mastered by James Plotkin. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with warped LA post-Parliament utopia artwork by vision wizard Spencer Longo. Edition of 500.” – NNF.

Archival muck documenting Fritz Welch and John Seden trying to extend the secretions. “I met John Seden at art school in Chicago in '87. We bonded instantly on weird art, The Residents, Shockabilly and Herschell Gordon Lewis films. We hung out briefly until i dropped out and moved back to Texas. Soon after, i moved to NYC and he formed Repulse Kava. We hung out whenever possible and collaborated on fucked-up videos, collages and music whenever we got together. 'Can Your Guinea Do The Dog?' was recorded in John's dank and mystical basement in 1995. As always we just plugged in whatever was to hand and folded reality a few times. But on this occasion it included a recording of my girlfriend's deceased guinea pig and john's dog got involved for zoomorphic balance. I listened to a cassette of this jam for years until i realized that it had the strong smelling odor of a Chocolate Monk release cuz it was a meeting of the minds, as well as the pelvis - the guinea was Priscilla, and the dog was Elvis!” -Fritz Welch. 

More illshapen and deranged brain snuff from Michigans Brothers Grime. You need that black fissure in the back off your head mended, right? Then start plastering. “SLITHER slathers strictly slack layers of hiss and too-trill reeds in single-take lakeside station session.  Sick Heath and Cotton Chris trade echoed coin-flips along a horizon whose dark moon refuses to set, in a shitbrick piss-black back alleyway leading everywhere.  Morepott loping loops elope with lingering lizard lines -- behold, the bundle of baby beats buried beneath BOSS-basted and beaten BASF blur!  "An edgy blend of heart-stopping terror, wry humor and surprising humanity" -- thar thou thready thor thissssssss ??” - C Spencer Yeh

New cassette album from Pete Nolan of the Magik Markers’ solo project, his deepest pass yet into dislocated acid folk. Opener “The Follow Trees” sounds like Donovan’s Hurdgy-Gurdy Man on mandrax, with a compulsive circular vocal melody surrounded by spiderwebs of guitar. “We’re Here Forever” is The Monkees’ “Porpoise Song” as heard via an nth generation Skip Spence demo. A cracked, deliberately stoned atmosphere crossed with pained end-of-the-world vocals and extended fuzz guitar solos further explodes the Spectre’s take on folk. Heard Steve Shelley was playing in the group these days, not sure if he’s on this one?

Two sides of heavy jazz gravities from this Pocahaunted offshoot who apply electricity and late-night atmospherics to torch song structures and Japanese underground aesthetics. “West Coast ghost squad Topaz Rags stalk back into the deadlights with a fresh vinyl single, their first new material since the Capricorn Born Again LP. Recorded in the heart of winter in a room with one blue light bulb, “The Crown Center” is pure nightprowler music: quaking bass, grime-jazz keys, dusty drums, witch choirs floating through the smog and into sleeping homes with the power lines cut. The sound of crime to come. The flip (“You Go On”) slips deeper into the psych-psycho psyche, a bleached-brain riff-rhythm grinding away endlessly while voices and electric piano stabs arc across the stereo field, raining ash. A grimmer twist on the Topaz formula, the dreamer’s dream turned dark. 33 RPM 7 inches of variously colored vinyl in hand-silkscreened cardstock sleeves. Edition of 345.” – NNF. 

”First had the perverse pleasure of tapping into Mr. Trance’s bizarro soundworld courtesy of archeologist housesitter Dylan Ettinger, who issued TT’s golden classic – The American Heartbeat – on his astute El Tule imprint last year. Fires were stoked so we tracked down Tracey/Tyler and he replied with a small mountain of lunatic live documents tracing the contours of his wacked stream-of-consciousness keyboard/organ abracadabra. Following a Herculean spring ‘10 U.S. tour with fellow fringe Americana guru-drifter Charles Taterbug, a solid tape on Night People, and an even weirder self-released opus (Hangtown U.S.A.), we are jazzed to present T Trance’s latest acid circus, Mummy Fingers. Recorded on a 4-track in a cabin in rural Washington, this sparkling C30 slipslides through all his manic dual-keys modes (one hand mans the organ, the other dances up and down a wah-fucked Casio), accented with the occasional mushroom starchild sing-songing vocals. It’s reminiscent of nothing else, and that’s obviously a rad/rare compliment. Hopefully more synthetic ivory tickling by this weirdo master will surface on NNF in the future. Pro-dubbed/imprinted orange tapes in j-cards with bootlegged Mozart art. Edition of 120.” – NNF.

“Balf Quarry, an old stone pit just outside of Hartford, Connecticut, represents a central place for Elisa Ambrogio and Pete Nolan, the duo who call themselves Magik Markers, and is the apt title of their forthcoming May Drag City release. Unearthed from the mines of Connecticut in 2001, Magik Markers have been brutalizing audiences with their shattering live appearances and recordings since the first part of this century. They are now living and creating on opposite sides of the country. Elisa Ambrogio recently moved to Seattle from San Francisco and Pete Nolan resides in Brooklyn, but they came together in Elisa's new city to record Balf Quarry with Scott Colburn (Sun City Girls, Animal Collective, Sir Richard Bishop). Balf Quarry has moody space in its soul, and on this album you'll find Elisa and Pete locked together, beating it out, listening to and feeling the sound of their earth quake. And slicing through all the atmosphere, Elisa's voice is a spear of light, splashes of mud, and an acid purple flashback. Listening to Balf Quarry is like immersing yourself in a great horror film, complete with mental dissipation, catharsis for the ears, and the most satisfying psychotic listening experience you'll have this year.” – DC.

“Balf Quarry, an old stone pit just outside of Hartford, Connecticut, represents a central place for Elisa Ambrogio and Pete Nolan, the duo who call themselves Magik Markers, and is the apt title of their forthcoming May Drag City release. Unearthed from the mines of Connecticut in 2001, Magik Markers have been brutalizing audiences with their shattering live appearances and recordings since the first part of this century. They are now living and creating on opposite sides of the country. Elisa Ambrogio recently moved to Seattle from San Francisco and Pete Nolan resides in Brooklyn, but they came together in Elisa's new city to record Balf Quarry with Scott Colburn (Sun City Girls, Animal Collective, Sir Richard Bishop). Balf Quarry has moody space in its soul, and on this album you'll find Elisa and Pete locked together, beating it out, listening to and feeling the sound of their earth quake. And slicing through all the atmosphere, Elisa's voice is a spear of light, splashes of mud, and an acid purple flashback. Listening to Balf Quarry is like immersing yourself in a great horror film, complete with mental dissipation, catharsis for the ears, and the most satisfying psychotic listening experience you'll have this year.” – DC.

Excellent quality archival live recordings of the classic trio line-up of Magik Markers – Elisa Ambrogio, Pete Nolan and Leah Quimby – recorded in Baltimore in 2003. Never got to see this line-up of the band as much as I would have liked to as they were a ferocious and unpredictable spectacle every night. Here they’re playing at some kind of tortuously down-tuned peak, with blunt guitars steamrolled by Nolan’s drums and Elisa’s inspired stream-of-consciousness performance style channeling Patti Smith as much as Lydia Lunch. Comes in the usual hand-screened envelopes.

Brand new deluxe limited edition self-released vinyl version of the Ecstatic Peace CD, with new silkscreened jackets, inserts and a full colour poster. "When confronted with an example of magnificence in nature, such as a waterfall, Jane Goodall reported that the chimpanzees she observed were captivated, as if in awe of the beauty of the world. On BOSS, the Magik Markers have tried to capture the chimps' awe. A formality and restraint the Markers have never exerted on their previous recorded material is present on BOSS. Now the Markers are Jainists, with their mouths masked so as to not inhale even one tiny insect, here pursuing the killer gentle with a vengeance. Recorded in the cavernous dark of Echo Canyon West, with producer Lee Ranaldo working the boards like a diviner, BOSS documents the Markers with a previously unheard fidelity and orchestration. Idiosyncratic song structure and melodies interspersed with a destructive drum stomp are reminiscent of the early electrified blues of Junior Kimbrough, or the black hole rhythms of Kousokuya. Mixing a gentle vulnerability with a winded egomania, the Markers have always had a musical tunnel vision; BOSS is that vision made manifest. The tug of war the Markers enact, the way they are fully prepared to start yanking their world apart as they find themselves losing their place in, makes moot possibilities of greatness or mediocrity. It makes them unapologetic soothsayers with their ears pressed to the ground, waiting for footsteps. With Peter Nolan, we finally hear what Lou Reed would have sounded like had he sallied with the drums instead of getting seduced by the easy praise of front man status. Like Rashid Ali squeezed into the Teutonic leather pants of Faust, Nolan drums like there are hell hounds at his heels but he just can't be bothered. Here both laconic and frenzied, Nolan's drumming arms reach out like an octopus's: tickling the ivories, humming the organ and blasting taps on some kind of endtime trumpet. As a pianist, Nolan reminds us that the piano is a percussive, beating out the whoomp of some old war dance, a bare foot-fall rhythm of fighters to battle and the heavy hands of a whiskey burlesque in the afternoon. Nolan is easy to underestimate, but finally, here is high fidelity record of the strange soul of one of America's most natural and quizzical musical minds. In a 2005 interview in The Wire, Elisa Ambrogio said, "I want [The Magik Markers] to concentrate on music and focus inward, to concentrate on our own language of sound." BOSS stands as the Markers' first stab at getting to the meat of this ambition. Ambrogio is not easy to categorize. Nose deep in New England Calvinism and the brutality of nature, Ambrogio's lyrics are like a transcription of a drunk lunchtime argument between Lisa Yuskavage and Herman Melville. A guitarist whose notes form question and hatchet marks with equal measure, a musical humility to the point of ingratiation fused with all visible seams to grandiose self-importance speeds through her playing. With a mix of blues simplicity, an almost Sonny Sharrock wailing and a janky Americana punk reminiscent of Pat Place and Roky Erickson, Ambrogio avoids preciousness like a rash. On BOSS, a tent rises right out of the empty plain and we are thrust into a full blown revival show with no audience and no lights; it is just Elisa preaching, Pete blowing Gabriel's horn, and the mad wind of the prairie blowing all around. Fairfield Porter wrote that: 'Art does not succeed by compelling you to like it, but by making you feel this presence in it. 'Is someone there?...'" - EP.

Much-anticipated LP+ 3xCD set celebrating two decades of cracked UK art/pop from the duo of Richard Youngs and Simon Wickham-Smith. The LP presents the duo’s first new recordings in years, consisting of wildly reworked versions of their first ever live performance, “The Very Good Song”. But the real gravy is on the CDs, three unreleased albums from their early-to-mid 90s peak. Smirr consist of a bunch of dilated drone instrumentals, Live!!! is a massively confusing studio cut-up while Songphase presents their legendary unreleased ‘pop’ album for the first time. In a way, Songphase is the duo’s Ultrahits, a series of classic DIY pop songs that at the time Simon claimed were “better than Oasis”. And it still sounds amazing. This is a fantastic testament to two of the most creative and genuinely oddball underground musicians to come out of the UK. Comes with an extended interview with Richard and Simon as well as liner notes from David Keenan, Neil Campbell, Jon Dale and Marc Masters. "20 Years celebrates two decades of music from Richard Youngs and SimonWickham-Smith, featuring four previously unreleased albums. The set includes the first new vinyl edition from the pair in almost 15 years, plus three other projects (presented here on CD) that were all completed and intended for release by the duo in the ’90s, but fell by the wayside for various reasons. 20 Years, the newly recorded LP, is one of the heaviest, most uncompromising records of the duo's long career. It consists of eight electro-acoustic reworkings of their first (unreleased) recording from 1987, and is a blistering set of tracks as wild and weird as anything they’ve ever done. The SMIRR CD features four epic instrumentals in the vein of classics such as LAKE and Asthma and Diabetes, flowing with extended grandeur, mixing drone and eccentric instrumentation in the duo’s immediately identifiable style. Songphase’s ten simple, lovely tunes are a reminder of their considerable ‘trad’ songwriting and performing prowess. While Youngs has worked in this style on his solo efforts, hearing Wickham-Smith match him track for track is a revelation. ‘Dream Song’ is among the former’s most moving pieces. Finally, LIVE!!! is a head-scratcher of an album, recorded live in-studio in full-on Dadaist style, —extended clavinet mania, Casio jams and plenty of outré expression. This set is packaged in a gatefold jacket with essays by David Keenan, Neil Campbell, Marc Masters and Jon Dale and an extended interview with Youngs and Wickham-Smith. The CDs are housed in a custom-binded insert in the pocket opposite the LP, with each disc held snug in its own die-cut pocket, and the audiophile-quality LP was cut by John Golden. Magnificent and ridiculous." – VHF. Very highly recommended! 

Warehouse find of mint/sealed copies of this all-time classic album, still the best Youngs/Wickham-Smith collaboration. Zoned, higher-minded psych rock, keyboard drones and *those* dual vocals. Some of their greatest ‘songs’: “Song For The Spanish Anarchists”, “Goat”, “I Live In A Big City”, “Overview And Sales Planning”. A classic album and a necessary addition to any shelf dedicated to underground music. Long out of print and never reissued. 

New acid drone drenched CD-R from Pete Nolan of Magik Markers, GHQ et. al. on his own label. First release of Spectre Folk's new "band" phase. "This CDR explores new sonic possibilities of home 16 track technology and early formation of the new band phase of Spectre Folk as Pete is joined by J.T. Sodas on synth. A few songs, new and old, are given the Band treatment. Thers also some very glopy stuff and some extendo blooz stuff, as well as some solo synth action. A long disc full of dripping mind exploration.." - Arbitrary Signs.

Limited edition of 500 copies LP from legendary minimalist composer, pianist and artists Charlemagne Palestine. Less than 200 copies of this LP were ever put on sale, with 350 of them offered to the audience who attended a Palestine performance. Sound 1 represents the apex of Palestine’s experiments with oscillators as universal drone generators and features 16 machines played at full volume and subtly tweaked to generate gorgeous, complex blooms of clashing tone, ghost patterns, hypnagogic shadows and subtle orchestral movements. Palestine talks of the piece as a 3-dimensional sculptural canvas in mid-air, likening the sound to the humming of gargantuan Tibetan bees. It’s a mesmerising piece, one that fully occupies and takes over whatever space it’s played in, a classic slice of minimal electronic psychedelia in the tradition of LaMonte Young, Coil’s Time Machines and the recent Eleh LPs. Recommended.

Limited edition of 100 copies split 7”, only officially available direct from the label. Christina’s side is one of her weirdest tracks, a ‘protest’ song scored for multiple overdubbed voices that move from catatonic Jandek-isms through haunted choral styles. Islaja contributes a spare, intimate vocal piece with a twisted folk melody illuminated by smears of backing vocals. 

Another unlikely vinyl reissue of a classic side from this legendary Japanese psych rock group. Blind Baby Has Its Mother Eyes is one of the most outrageously fucked-up visions of psychedelic excess to escape the prodigious gravity of the Japanese underground. Consisting of three long tracks, this is Rallizes at their most strung-out and extended. At points Mizutani’s fuzz and space echo soloing obliterate the group entirely, giving the album a White Light/White Heat style intensity. At other points his six string sounds closer to interstellar interference or pure white noise, buzzing all over the group like a fleet of plugged-in wasps. The vocals are languorous and supremely wasted, soaked in delay, while the group ride outrageous two-chord progressions straight into the sun. One of the best versions of their legendary show-closer, “The Last One”, too. Number twelve in Julian Cope’s Japrocksampler. Heavy duty sleeves pressed on 180g vinyl. Highly recommended.

First ever remotely-available double LP edition of this classic album from the most mysterious and enigmatic Japanese underground group, Les Rallizes Denudes. Definitely the place to start for any Rallizes/Mizutani neophytes, Heavier Than A Death In The Family captures the monomaniacal quintessence of this amazing group, with simple two-note bass pulses propelling endless fuzz and space echo solos and delayed vocals through a fog of amplifier feedback. Features supremely ragged versions of a bunch of classic tracks: “People Can Choose”, “The Night Collectors”, “Enter The Mirror”, “Strung Out Deeper Than The Night”. One of the corner stones of the Japanese underground sound. Number 3 in Julian Cope’s Japrocksampler. Heavy duty sleeves pressed on 180g vinyl. Highly recommended.

New album from the latest incarnation of Pocahaunted, committed to riding the groove all the way into the sun and marrying PiL-styled studio environs with primitive dub shapes and the freak-space of prime Fela Kuti. The vocals still swarm all over the tracks like day-glo clouds but the way they unravel a buncha repeat notes into the kind of progressive vistas that used to vibrate the Ya Ho Wha garage is uniquely potent. “After a six-month hiatus, a complete line-up overhaul, a trip to SXSW, a UK/EURO tour, and a full year-plus of only playing shows and writing songs and amassing totemic objects, finally Pocahaunted return to the recorded realm with their first album since 2008. Time flies when yr having not not fun and all that. Make It Real collects seven of the band’s 2009 live staples for a 40-minute-ish collage of basement body music, garage dub damage, outsider funkadelic sprawl, voodoo rhythm workouts, duo femme soul vocal dynamics, dripping gold sweat, and dream fulfillment. Recorded barefoot and shirtless and direct to tape at Green Machine Studio in summer ’09 by M. Geddes Gengras and featuring guest bamboo sax by jazzmaster Alex Gray (of Dreamcolour/Deep Magic) and mastered by James Plotkin. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with warped LA post-Parliament utopia artwork by vision wizard Spencer Longo. Edition of 500.” – NNF.

Hard to think of any contemporary American group that has such an instinctive grasp of melodic DIY garage euphorics as Cloud Nothings. Their stripped-down take on post-punk song is as inspired as the Scrotum Poles and as beautifully ramshackle as anything by Index. At points on Turning On they sound like a more garage/Modern Lovers-damaged take on the Postcard sound but there are also aspects of Half Japanese, The Dovers and Bleib Alien. LP comes with a download coupon. On coloured vinyl. Recommended. 

Amazing single from this brief-lived duo that united two of the key underground avant/garage conceptualists to come out of the French underground, Thierry Mueller (Ilitch/Ruth et al) and Philippe Doray. A fantastic follow-up to the Ruth single that floored so many people last year. “Early 80, years after the release of Nouveaux modes industriels and 10 suicides while I was working on the first recordings of Polaroid/Roman/Photo, Philippe Doray and myself decided to work jointly on a project for concerts: Crash (both great readers of JG Ballard) was born. This project included new songs, tracks' adaptations of each and improvisations. We made some concerts in France and the Netherlands.” – Thierry Mueller. Both tracks are taken from rehearsals recorded in 1984. Pile ou Face has been released within a different mix on a single sided 7” which was given away with the first issue of Inaudible magazine (this version can be found on CD format on the excellent Thierry Müller compilation Rare & unreleased 1974-1984). Vaughan's Ballad is previously unreleased.

Great compilation of stray tracks form this obscure North American Industrial group. Deviation Social formed in 1981 after Arshile Injeyan tuned into a radio station playing experimental music and first encountered Cabaret Voltaire, Non, Decayes, The Fall, the whole LAFMS cabal, The Residents and – most importantly – Throbbing Gristle. On a quest to uncover more oddball music, Arshile contacted Monte Cazazza through an article in Slash and he became an unofficial live member of the group. The group’s sound soon evolved to reflect influences like Harry Partch (in the use of odd acoustic percussive sounds and shapes), Suicide, Faust and SPK. From End To Beginning collects a bunch of tracks only available on compilations and it makes for a fascinating window onto the revolutionary years of Industrial music. Alla the signifiers are in place – a song about Manson, a guest appearance by the notorious Mary Dowd, a track called “New Right” – but the palette is so radical, with aspects of DIY tape composition, electro-acoustic improvisation, primitive synth -  it’s a reminder of just how wide-ranging and creatively accelerated the Industrial revolution was, eclipsing the pub-rock radicalism of punk and providing a blueprint that is still unravelling. Arshile’s vocals are particularly great, giving the music an apocalyptic Chrome/Non styled edge that at points (as on the fantastic “Multitado Humanus Tabesco”) almost sounds like a garage Whitehouse. The set is beautifully put together with a large booklet featuring new liners, fliers, texts and a piece on Deviation Social by Seymour Glass of Bananafish. One of the best collections of primitive Industrial experimentation yet uncovered. Highly recommended.

Edition of 120 copies CD-R documenting a live performance from Paul Labrecque (Sunburned Hand Of The Man/Trees Chants And Hollers/The Other Method et al). Labrecque’s string work makes reference to the lonesome sound of Sandy Bull and John Fahey while connecting with the experiments in contemporary American Primitive drone of Paul Metzger and Matthew Valentine. Quietly psychedelic and spellbindingly intimate. In full colour gatefold card sleeve. 

Limited tour-only CD from Carlos Giffoni’s new solo project dedicated to primitive techno and acid house. Two minimal tracks that combine Industrial drones with squiggles, beats and synthesized wormholes.

One track each from Courtis of Reynols and Nyoukis of Blood Stereo/Decaer Pinga et al coupled with a live duo bomb hitting the red in Brighton, July 16th 2006. Courtis track is all slowed-down barbiturate piano/guitar sonority clank while Nyoukis presents "Spiritual Mould", a minimal piece for single suspended tones that sounds like a symphony for telephone exchange tones and melting circuit boards. Live set is more Neanderthal piano/chains/vox improv clank.

Debut album from this Detroit synth-punk duo with some kinda historical connection to Wolf Eyes. Featuring K. Michael and Nate S., the group build from a base that would take the malevolent electro-threat of early Suicide and ply it with amphetamine-charged Cramps riffs, the kind of drum machine batteries most associated with Big Black and a claustrophobic, assaultive style that is somewhere between early Industrial rock and contemporary minimal synth stylings, with murky, convulsive songs that are somehow uniquely Detroit but that have tendons that stretch alla the way to both coasts, taking-in aspects of CBGBs-era NY scum and peroxide LA glam punk. A beauty.

Brand new big-band line-up release from Blood Stereo, recorded live in Leeds in April 2005. The duo of Dylan Nyoukis and Karen Constance are joined by Julian Bradley, Neil Campbell and Sticky Foster for an Ur-primitive UK underground freak-out that jams signals with electro-flesh conceptions that are as occult as Heathen Erath-era Throbbing Gristle and as ecstatically damaged as anything from the tongue of yr favourite dope-dosing guru. A whole mess of smeared vocals, slow helium of electronics, loops, reeds and - crucially - plenty of doof. Killer.

Necessary document of Dylan Nyoukis’s recent tape/sound poetry innovations, with punk epiglottal torture and clots of vocal vibration channelled into sick loops of phlegm, text and tourettes. Singular work that should appeal to fans of Junko, Chopin and Dilloway. First track recorded live at The Engine Room, Brighton (first ever solo gig) March 4th 2006 with two microphones and two reel-to-reels. Second piece for voice, reel-to-reel and oscillator. One dead-tone interlude.

First remotely ‘available’ evidence of this fantastic grunting US boogie rock monolith led by legendary private/psych dealer Paul Major and featuring Chris Gray from Double Leopards on drums and Matt Sweeney on guest licks. The sound has roots deep in Southern rock, early ZZ Top, AC/DC et al with shots of Canned Heat, John Lee Hooker, Tetuzi Akiyama etc given a deliriously primitive shakedown and extended to infinity via endless repeat-riffing that is minimalist and psychedelic in intent. Major also contributes some barely decipherable wild man ughs and rasping monologues but it’s the brainless-to-the-point-of-Zen keep-on-keeping-on guitar licks that are insanely addictive, with spurts of lead steel that could almost be Kurihara plays Skynyrd. Highly recommended.

New very limited 7” from David Payne’s Fossils project on Graham Lambkin’s own Kye imprint: ”David Payne began building his Fossils empire back in 2004. Since that time Fossils has colonized the underground circuit with a steady flow of ultra-limited tapes/cdrs, many of them through David's own Middle James Co imprint. The Fossils sound is always one of formless despair. Churning low-grade electronics, primitive tape manipulations, and an aura of stoned reverie are all genuine signatures. Kye is pleased to offer Fossils a rare vinyl outing, showcasing two classic new works. The Golden Door delivers a lo-fi elevation over grey clouds of looping ferric tape, whilst War Puzzle could have been swept off the floor at Cold Storage - a strange and paranoid collage of crumpled guitar and collapsing sine waves. With both pieces edited/mixed by Graham Lambkin and mastered by Jason Lescalleet, this is Fossils like you've never heard them before. The Golden Door arrives in one of three Lambkin-designed sleeves - each depicting the back of someone’s head, in a hand-numbered edition of only 100 copies. Dig in.” – GL. 

Edition of 1000 copies 7” from the duo of Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never) and Joel Ford. Two sides of woozily erotic electronics, with washes of digital surf and looped female vocals generating a lush headspace of mis-remembered teenage. Only Lopatin can make hypnagogic pop sound so beautifully melancholy. Recommended. 

Excellent new album from Lambkin that follows on from and extends Salmon Run’s use of tapes, classical music and environmental sound to generate an immersive sound environment that combines a rough DIY handmade feel with endless sonic depth. The first piece uses water sounds, strings (played by Samara Lubelski), bells, wind and animal noise, while the second adds snippets of classical music, drones and odd voices. Reduced to its constituent parts it’s hard to imagine just how effective the combination is but it’s a trip, especially on the second piece which touches down in one of the most lush, alien denouements of his career. Hard to think of anything comparable outside of Lambkin’s own hermetic universe, though there are aspects of Basil Kirchin’s Worlds Within Worlds. 

Deluxe vinyl edition of this classic solo album from Heather Leigh (Jailbreak/Scorces/Jandek et al) originally released in a tiny edition on cassette by Fag Tapes. Two fully-extended high metal masses for amplified pedal steel and vocals that blow all notions of form, fidelity and frilly fucking folk-picking fops to the kinda sweet metallic ribbons previously worn as crowns by Keiji Haino, Jojo Hiroshige and Teenage Jesus & The Jerks. Very different in tone and attack from the recent Jailbreak LP, Jailhouse Rock has a more amorphous sound, with muzzy smears of guitar caked in NZ-style fuzz and clouds of high string tone that conjure the miasmic electronics of Maurizio Bianchi. One of Heather’s most blasted sides with all-new nuts artwork by Heath Moreland. “Jailhouse Rock is in fact a wax reissue of a long OOP 2006 cassette classic on Michigan crud factory Fag Tapes. It was a fave of ours that year (and every year), so it feels extra celebratory to be able to offer up a freshly remastered (by Pete Swanson) LP edition of the album for global re-appreciation. Sprawling, long-form descents/ascents into mythic electric disorientation, powered by her trademark recipe of FX-soaked pedal steel and voice. Jailhouse feels loosely more aligned with a mid-aughts drone/noise aesthetic than the outsider dirt road Americana of her Devil If You Can Hear Me LP (also on NNF), but the distinction is a slight one. Side A swims in swooping sheets of vox and tempestuous wind tunnel dynamics before slowly dying away to wheezing disembodied harmonica. The B piece begins in a more overtly beautiful mode, a trinity of crystalline notes picked and stretched until they’re transformed into a rapturous sky of textural distortion. Sensual and vertigo-inducing in equal measure. Black vinyl LPs in jackets with brand new paint/collage artwork by Heath Moerland (of Sick Llama, Slither, Odd Clouds, etc). Edition of 400.” – NNF. Highly recommended!

New album of automatic nursery rhyme constructs and sad vocal hymnals from Eva aka Inca Ore. Silver Sea Surfer School features some of her most otherworldly creations, from lonesome vocals with angelic reverb treatments hissing over moebius electronics through macabre pitch-shifted visions cut-up with psychedelic junkyard ritual straight out of The Skaters’ songbook. Certainly the most ambitious and sonically ‘out’ of Eva’s records to date, with tape jump-cuts spooling through a variety of underwater/outer space environments while the vocals skirt the very fringe legibility, from spoken word memorials through distorted alien tongue. Edition of 500 copies. Recommended. 

Euphoric new psych-pop single from Julian, with iconic marching band melodies and soaring vocals. The single is topped off with a public service CD-R reissue of Julian’s debut cassette album Born2Run that originally came out in 2009 on Wild Animal Kingdom. Recommended. 

Hand-numbered edition of 500 copies LP from this incredible duo. Hjuler and Mama Baer connect the dots between feral rock, DIY art action and experimental sound poetry, pushing repetition and subverted cultural modes way past the point of a joke and into realms of personal revelation. On the first side Hjuler and Baer present a collage of American sound poetry as filtered through the booze-addled brain of a pair of middle-European alcoholics, with mutterings, screamings and vocal gymnastics applied to cheap electronic reproduction techniques. Over on the flip Baer uses field recordings, radio broadcasts and found sound to push her solo vocal performance into the kind of hysterical environs previously touched on by Adris Hoyos and William Bennett. Nothing else like them.  

Unlikely reissue of a bunch of homemade 1980s computer game soundtracks recorded by Mel Croucher for Automata UK, the company most famous for Pimania, a surreal adventure game that was based around tracking down the golden sundial of Pi, secreted somewhere in the English countryside. The music was originally packaged with the software as a bonus cassette that was intended to be played as a simultaneous soundtrack to the game. The cracked underground 1980s comic book vibe confuses Hypnagogic and hauntological modes and the sonics are somewhere between a psychedelic episode of The Goodies, the haunted Albion stylings of the Canterbury and Holyground scenes and the music of James Ferraro. The presentation is truly beyond the call, with a full colour gatefold sleeve that re-imagines Jimi Hendrix’s Axis Bold As Love as a lurid head comic, extensive liners and classy period snaps. The whole package feels like a time machine to the last pre-internet stand of Head culture. Recommended for weirdo computer/sci-fi/comic book loners.

Atmospheric new collection of field recordings, installations and area sonorities from Moniek Darge, all captured on the island of Crete and released by Graham Lambkin: "Kye is pleased to announce the release of Crete Soundies, the major new work by Moniek Darge, and the follow-up to last years Soundies (1980-2001) CD. Crete Soundies presents three new pieces -- Magnesia (2006), Anemos (2007) and East Crete (2008-2009). These works were born from two years of Levka Ori sound research, and an additional year in east Crete in collaboration with fellow sound artist Francoise Vanhecke. Moniek Darge was born in Bruges, 1952 and studied music theory and violin at the Music Conservatory of Bruges, painting at the Ghent Royal Academy of Fine Arts; Art History, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Ghent, Belgium. She is active as composer, violinist, performer and audio artist and has built light and soundsculptures, installations, musical instruments and for many years has been constructing a series of alternative music boxes, with which she also performs. Darge has specialised in both soundscapes and live-art performances in which visual and musical aspects are combined and in interactional improvisation on violin. Since 1970 she has performed around the world and has been active on stage, first with the Logos Ensemble, then with Logos Duo (together with Godfired-Willem Raes), and more recently with the M&M robot ensemble. She also founded Logos Women, a small group specialised in intermedia improvisations performing their own compositions for various instruments, voices and music boxes. Crete Soundies comes housed in 6-panel digipak, in an edition of 500, and is released with the support of the Flemish Government." - KYE.

Killer new 7” from Matthew Valentine and Erika Elder with one of their wildest post-Kousokuya heavy metal masses on the A featuring some wailing lead guitar from MV, Erika on electric firebird mandolin and silicon fuzz, two drummers, bass and harmonica. The flip is a classic slow-burning duo performance. Comes on gold coloured vinyl. 

Reissue of what was originally a very limited CD-R made available for a US tour. Eva Van Deuren makes beautifully simplistic music using toys, sampling keyboards, vocals and electronics and Neverending Waves is one of her most ambitious sets, with music inspired by Javanese Gamelan and Popol Vuh’s soundtrack to Aguirre. On Lieven Martens of Dolphins Into The Future’s own imprint.

A while back we asked Richard Youngs to record an album especially for Volcanic Tongue, bearing in mind VT’s nebulous but still somehow specific musical aesthetic. We didn’t hear anything for a while, until one day Richard turned up at VT HQ with a CD-R in his hand. I’ve recorded the perfect VT album, he said. We took it home and it damn near took our head off. He was right: Inceptor is the perfect Youngs album for VT. Imagine Richard’s feel for soaring Celtic melodies and spontaneous composition married to PSF-style guitar excess and you’re close to Inceptor’s brain-razzing appeal. Indeed, if Youngs hadda cut an album for PSF Inceptor would undoubtedly be it. Scored for vocals and overdriven electric guitar, Youngs tears raging, iconoclastic solos from the guitar, peaking in glorious folk melodies and clouds of thick overtone that at points sounds like a fleet of Aylerised berserkers playing bagpipes. He sings over the top in a style that reconciles the wordless chants of “Goat”-era Youngs/Wickham-Smith with the electric Albion stylings of his Jagjaguwar recordings. Possibly the wildest and most euphorically beautiful album of Richard’s career, Inceptor is a dazzling slab of peaking psychedelic rock and soaring folk-simple melodies. The LP comes in an edition of only 300 copies, with stunning individually silkscreened sleeves from Alan Sherry of Siwa and packaged in high quality Japanese plastic sleeves. Pretty much your dream Richard Youngs release. Highest possible recommendation!

Excellent LP, run of 450 copies, from Daniel Martin-McCormick aka Sex Worker. Three long tracks that combine Hypnagogic keyboard patterns with minimal Kraut-styled keyboard melodies ala Cluster/Harmonia and punk-primitive disco stylings. Beautifully bleak in a 3am neon style, The Labor Of Love is intended as a series of “protest songs articulating Daniel’s heavy anti-sex trafficking/enslaved bodies activist agenda” and it has the feel of abandoned backlots, of empty freeways in the middle of the night and huge industrial space. Some of the moodiest and most atmospheric keyboard zones to come out of the current synth wave, cut up with bursts of vocals that have all of the amphetamine energy of Klaus Dinger in La Dusseldorf. Recommended.

Beautiful melancholy set of happy/sad hypnagogic guitar reveries from Matthew Mondanile and Martin Courtney, recorded live on WFMU 18/12/08. The sound is really pared-down on this and it highlights the kind of magical, lost summer atmosphere that Mondanile is able to generate using the sparest of instrumentation. Choice tracklisting too: “Backyard”, “Beach Point Pleasant”, “The Mall”, Real Estate’s “Let’s Rock The Beach”, “Extended Jam” and “Surf’s Up”. Fragile, minimal psychedelia that is deeply nostalgic and personal, with an odd real-people vibe on tracks like “The Mall” that really takes you there. Edition of 500 copies, with 250 on yellow vinyl. All VT copies come on yellow vinyl. Hand-stamped sleeves. Highly recommended. 

Penultimate Press have surpassed themselves with this second collection of work from Graham Lambkin of The Shadow Ring et al. This heavy hardback book features 100 new drawings made on a recent trip to Miami. The book comes with a CD-R featuring a beautiful new minimal loop composition by Lambkin. Edition of 250 copies but all VT copies come from the special sub-edition of 100 hand-numbered and signed copies. Stunning. “Lambkin's eye and pen guide us through a confusion of local observation. We find ourselves transported to the opulent sands of South Beach, the strip malls of Dade County, and the many tourists spots one would expect to engage. Yet Lambkin allows us to view these sites through his own distorted lens. This is not the Miami of common expectation. Lambkin throws us headfirst in to a hallucinogenic netherworld where logic and common sense cower in the shade of the palms. A world where fantasy and reality mix effortlessly and are drank as the cocktail of choice. A world where the skunk ape is king.” – PP. 

It’s been pretty amazing to see the reputation this record has acquired in the wake of VT breaking it back in 2005. This is the second vinyl reissue we’ve stocked of Wizards, not including our brief haul of original LPs and cassettes. John Olson from Wolf Eyes was the first person we ever heard talking it up, describing it as sounding like "Corwood jamming Alpha Centauri" and that still feels like as good an approximation of the weirdly personal Kosmische universe that Emmanuel floats through on this amazing side as you're likely to get. There are keyboard lines so pure that they sound like they are etched into the air via beams of dazzling light, the kind of celestial melodies and hosanna hymns most often associated with the heavy devotional cloak of mid-period Popol Vuh, occult drones that sound endlessly deep and a very personal cosmology that balances cracked 'real people' mysto-universe musings with everything that the term New Age might've been, had it been primarily practiced by future-bending loners in private Sirius-channeling lodges situated at the cardinal points of the earth. Something so completely lonesome about this that every time you play it in the early hours it feels as if the very world has stopped spinning. All in all, a major re-issue and the one that'll start you off chasing down alla those weird late 70s/early 80s synth/new age privates. This is a major upgrade from the earlier reissue that Lieven Martens of Dolphins Into The Future put out, it sounds fantastic, and comes with a full colour sleeve in an edition of 500 copies. "I compose and perform electronic synthesizer music, which sometimes includes electronically enhanced acoustic and electric guitar. The term I like to use for my music is Electronic Minimal. My music style is to first create a foundation using cyclic, poly rhythmic music, then build several layers of improvised leads and rhythms. I have an extensive background in spiritual and metaphysical studies. This is another influence in how I compose and perform my music as I also look at my music as an Electronic Meditation. In meditation, a mantrum is used to focus the mind and keep it from drifting during the meditation. The manturm then allows the meditations and contemplations. My music is very similar to a meditation in that the mantrum is the cyclic, poly rhythmic music foundation that I use to set the theme of the composition. The leads and rhythms are my meditations based on the mantrum foundation. Not only is my music for general listening, it can also enhance the ability of the mind and the spirit to go beyond what is considered the "normal" boundaries of the five senses to the "Source of One's Being" for work with creativity, increase spiritual awareness, mind expansion or to just have a nice time being there to refresh the Soul. My music is wonderful as background when working, reading or studying to help focus for better retention without getting too tired, as well as used for relaxation or during a massage to release tension better for deeper body work. Wizards was my first deep trance electronic music album. This album was inspired by TERRY RILEY, one of the earliest people ever to compose and perform long, extended, cyclic pieces in the electronic format. This music was composed and performed in '81 and '82. I consider this album to be the best representation of the type of music I like to create. The instrumentation is three Sequential Circuits PRO-1s and a Yamaha SK-20, all real time recording to a Teac 4-track reel-to-reel." - J D Emmanuel. Highly recommended.

”Where to start? Upon hearing this new LP from Moon Unit it is immediately apparent that this Glaswegian trio stand apart from a lot of the psyche out new boys on the block. Perhaps because they feature Nackt Insecten himself, Ruaraidh Sanachan, Andreas Jonsson of Lanterns, and Peter Kelly. When I first heard this completed LP after a few different incarnations, I was really blown away, the previous versions that had dropped through my mailbox were really something, but this, the final version is unreal in its sheer goodness. The five jams on this LP make up one of the best psyche out, freak out full lengths I've heard this year. It's an incredible record filled with furiously wild drum explosions, keyboard zone outs, sci-fi guitar shredding, and wailing feedback. It really seems to perfect blend some of the best sounds that have occurred in the UK over the last few years, cannot recommend highly enough. Play as loud as you can! If you were into Nackt Insecten's Quantum Odyssey LP on Blackest Rainbow last year, you will love this for sure, and if you're just into wild free music such as Vibracathedral Orchestra, grab a copy of this beast! Edition of 500, with cover design by Jake Blanchard (the man behind Menagerie). Pressed on heavyweight virgin vinyl.” – BRR. 

“Fantastic set by Matthew Valentine and Erika Elder from the recent UK tour in February 2010 recorded at the Brudenell Social Club, Leeds.  On this one the duo are joined by local resident Mick Flower on bass for the whole set and the Doozer provides blues harp on a couple of tracks.  Whilst this is the same line-up and a similar set as those played in Manchester and Coventry a few days later (captured on recent Heroine releases "(Bad) Blood on the Doozer's Guitar" and "Electric Wharf (Conventrian)") this is well worth checking out as it has quite a different sound: more agressive, bit faster and really good mix on the sonics.  Firstly, this 'bootleg' comes from two composite mixes to get it right and it shows with a much clearer recording than some of the other Heroine releases.  The set opens with "Cold Rain" which sounds sublime this time around; Mick's bass is less distorted, you can hear those melodic bass runs properly this time, and this is clearest I have heard Erika's firebird mandolin and lap steel outside of a spectrasound recording.  About four minutes in MV drops a beautiful solo with single melting notes ringing out, great version.  Next up is "Get Right Church" which is the only performance from the set which does not have such a hard edge.  Instead it is a much more authentic blues rendition which reminds me of the electric blues recordings from Chess Studios circa 1950s.  The Doozer's blues harp is simple 3-note riffs but with effective note bending in the style of Junior Wells or Little Watler, and MV's clean, single note solos sound like Hubert Sumlin.  Midway through MV produces some delicate clean wah-wah reminiscent of Hendrix's "Up from the Skies" before bursting into a fuller onslaught for the song's close.  If the versions of this song from the No Floor Tour were blues rock at their finest, then this version is simply electric blues at its finest.  Dedicated to Jo Ann Kelly who I'm sure would have approved.  "Summer Magic" returns to the more frazzled playing on this set with the opening chords being laden in wah-wah and hammered out relentlessly throughout.  Really like the version of "Environments" on this set of shows with the sitar-sounding meanderings going into waves of raga induced chord-like crescendos which whip up a frenzy.  Sounds a bit like a live take on "Jook Enthusiast", the opening track from the latest COM release "Bollywoe". Finally, a few seconds of fuzz signals the descent from "Environments" into one of the heavier versions of "Canned Happiness" I have heard, even without drums.  Not much canned boogie, only a full-on feedback onslaught just to prove they can melt guitars better than Courtis / Moore, yeah right! Only question remains, did Mick Flower's house feature in the top ten middens? Great sonics.  Highly recommended.” – Andrew Ross

Hand-numbered edition of 75 copies 3” CD-R from Bill Shute’s Kendra Steiner imprint with a heavy Industrial drone piece from Ophibre aka Benjamin Rossignol who creates densely populated spectral spaces using signal processes. A dark, claustrophobic work that touches on the infernal from of Double Leopards circa A Hole Is True. Another great one from Kendra.

Dunno how Nyali Recordings do it but as anyone who picked up their phenomenal Masami Kawaguchi New Rock Syndicate CD-R will tell you, they consistently succeed in scoring the best material from whoever it is they’re working with. This time round it’s Stefan Neville aka Pumice, with a collection of unreleased radio sessions from around the world that is so perfectly balanced between classic NZ/Flying Nun singer-songwriter-isms and blasted Dead C/Fushitsusha style black hole rock that it’ll have you lining up your King Loser wax before you’re even halfway done. Neville is one of only a handful of performers on the planet – Wooden Wand, Jeremy Earl, Alastair Galbraith – that is capable of combing classic songwriting moves and a feel for higher-minded melody with the aesthetics of scorch, invigorating the singer/songwriter blueprint with a ton of outside junk, with warped fidelity, Dictaphone hymns and mangled feedback instants co-habiting with great, great songs just like they used to ‘back in the day’. Worldwide Gullet draws on tracks from Neville’s last bunch of recordings – Pebbles and Quo - and also includes a buncha covers, two Gfrenzy tracks and one by CJA, both unreleased in Pumice form. Also included are a string of tracks labeled “etc” which Neville describes as “traditional extended live Pumice variations for endless cassette and intercom. Super fans might notice loops from albums being reused and buried in amongst those.” Some of the songs are so blasted that the only real comparison is early This Kind Of Punishment or even Galbraith’s Morse LP. Cross that with instrument destruction that’s as nod-out beautiful as any Dead C fade-out and you’ve got the go-to Pumice album of choice. Hand-numbered edition of 107 copies. Highly recommended.  

Brand new limited CD-R from the best new group in Scotland, Glasgow’s Smoke Jaguar. Smoke Jaguar tore it up when they opened Subcurrent 2010 and this new album, limited to 77 hand-numbered copies, is their most fully realized set to date. The duo have a remarkable dynamic, with Kevin McCarvel playing slow-motion puffs of sad single notes with all of the blasted weight of Suishou No Fune or Miminikoto while Stuart Crutchfield drops zagging bombs of barbed wire electricity all over the top. If you like twin guitars that sound like beams of white light wrestled into submission by two guys with an intuitive understanding of instant form, then you might wanna weld this one to your head. Massively heavy jams for fans of Skullflower, Universal Indians, Fushitsusha et al. Recommended. 

Necessary vinyl reissue of the debut album from Japanese acid folk loner Aritomo. Originally self-released on vinyl in 2005, the album was recorded between 2003-2004. It’s a magical side, recalling aspects of Go Hirano, the Org catalogue and early Ghost. Aritomo’s vocals have a slurred/alien tongue feel that is nicely drugged and the music moves from avalanching acoustic downers ala Leonard Cohen through weird flute and field recordings that reflect on the more ‘environmental’ aspects of Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides and fragile/lucid folk songs that combine gentle ritualistic atmospheres, Hallelujahs-style melodies and a vocal that’s way beyond the blank. A classic side of PSF-styled acid folk. Edition of only 300 copies. Highly recommended.

Yow – part of a batch of releases on the newly-activated Nyali Recordings imprint run by Glasgow’s Smoke Jaguar, Another Side Of New Rock Syndicate presents the most ferociously beautiful music recorded by Masami Kawaguchi under the Rock Syndicate banner. Recorded live in Tokyo, the set explodes into life with “Why?”, a brutalist psych construction that demolishes time and space with all of the power of early Fushitsusha or Kousokuya. Kawaguchi’s guitar sounds magnificent, towering over the drums and bass and casting a black shadow over the whole group. The set is really varied, moving from the opening metal salvo through zones of blissed acid folk and squealing post-Rallizes acid, all topped off with Kawaguchi’s beautifully languorous vocals. Can’t recall spinning a Japanese underground side of late that so perfectly articulates everything I love about the whole PSF post-everything psych aesthetic and if that ever meant anything to you, you need to hear this. Packaged in art card sleeves with paste-on art in a hand-numbered in an edition of only 125 copies. Highly recommended.

Beautifully assembled eight cassette box set in the mode of the earlier Road Trips box with live recordings from the April 2010 No Floor Tour featuring Matthew Valentine, Erika Elder, Mick Flower, John Moloney and Zuma with guest spots from J.Mascis and Doc Dunn. In moulded plastic case with a full-colour booklet featuring liners and pics. Jams from Grey Matter Book, Hadley MA 4/9/09, Silent Barn, Ridgewood NY 4/10/10, Fairfield Chapel, Oberlin OH 4/11/10, PJ’s Lager House, Detroit MI 4/12/10, The Boat, Toronto ON 4/13/10, La Sala Rossa, Montreal QC 4/14/10, Spring Street Gallery, Saratoga Springs NY 4/15/2010, Nom D’Artiste Loft, Boston MA 4/16/10. Here’s Andrew’s review of the Montreal set to get you salivating: “Another stunning set, this time from the quintet of Matthew Valentine and Erika Elders with Golden Road cohorts in tow of Mick Flower, Doc Dunn and John Moloney recorded in Montreal, Canada as part of the 'No floor tour' in April 2010. This is simply blues rock jams at their finest and less psychedelic in places than some previous Golden Road shows. The playing is completely capable of rivaling the marathon blues infused rock workouts of the Allman Brothers Band or Led Zeppelin at their peak with a big dose of Sonny Boy Williamson's 'Nobody's Fault But Mine' thrown in. Throughout the set John Moloney lays down a simple 4/4 rock beat but with the same type of swing, feel and control afforded by Buddy Miles to Hendrix's Band of Gyspys. The result being a set which charges along but with a real sense of groove layered over the top with blues wailing guitar and mouth harp. The set starts with a slow psychedelic workout around "Satisfied" but keeping the blues theme before charging into a set which runs "Get Right Church", "Canned Happiness” and a closing jam of "Environments" into "Feelin' Fine".  There are many highlights to choose but clocking in at over 14 minutes this is the finest version of "Get Right Church" I have heard, a relentless blues jam which obliterates the recent studio version on Barn Nova. As a grown adult I find myself listening to this with the same giant grin I first encountered at the age of 13 when I was handed a copy of AC/DC's High Voltage or Canned Heat's Fried Hockey Boogie and thinking - can rock music be this much fun? So if your musical tastes allow you enjoy the rock of AC/DC at the same time as the musicianship of Jandek then you have got to hear this! Highest possible recommendation.” – Andrew Ross. Edition of only 150 copies.

New release on the Glasgow-based label run by Kevin McCarvel and Stuart Crutchfield of Smoke Jaguar. A great set of massively cranked textural improvisations from the duo of Ben Hall (Graveyards/Bill Dixon/Joe Morris et al) and guitarist/inventor Chris Riggs, confusing process and form across a series of tracks that move in tectonic percussive waves. Hand-numbered edition of 79 copies in art paper sleeves with paste-on covers. 

Very special and very limited art edition version of Andrew’s latest album, this time packaged in a gorgeous handmade slipcase with Japanese text and a full colour inner sleeve. All copies individually handmade by Andrew. Ghost Of Nakhodka reissues an impossible to score cassette that was only available in Japan. Built around a series of shorter than usual tracks, Ghost Of Nakhodka drifts through fourteen minimal sound worlds with vocals by Daisuke Suzuki and piano from Vikki Jackman. Soft feedback sounds, music box timbres, slow melancholy drones and the same sad, foggy atmosphere that defines all of his best work. Highly recommended.

Deluxe CD reissue in hand-made card slipcases of this classic LP: A new solo Andrew Chalk album is always an event at VT but when it’s as jaw-droppingly beautiful as The Cable House it’s a contender for album of the year. The music is drawn from an emotionally high-wire recording session that took place in 2008 with Chalk generating a number of sound environments using electronically treated piano. Chalk’s playing is stately, slow and extremely poignant, with tiny melodic phrases falling like cherry blossoms into pools of pale reverb and broken up, overloaded tape. At points some of the music recalls William Basinski’s haunting Disintegration Loops, at others the music of Christina Carter at her most heavenly or Fripp and Eno’s unreleased album of early music tape work. Right now, with autumn breaking into winter and the trees left bare and the orange streetlights and the dark nights, The Cable House feels like the perfect soundtrack. The first section is made up of five shorter tracks that suspend single notes in lugubrious tape treatments and subtle sonic dislocations while the last track is an extended epic that further dilates the sounds and ups the emotional ante. Mesmerising, profoundly sad, a classic recording from the UK master of out-of-focus drone poetry. Highly recommended.

Limited factory-pressed 'real' CD album from Tara Burke aka Fursaxa, packaged in marbled, psychedelic card slipcases and wraparound inner sleeves and released on her own label. Recorded in Pennsylvania and Florida and mastered by Norm Fetter and Michael Gibbons of Bardo Pond. The whole disc has a heavy Judee Sill feel that hasn't really been so apparent in her back catalogue until now but the combination of bells, hypnagogic choral settings and distant, sunbleached fidelity immediately conjures a similar dark, devotional air to Sill's masterful "The Donor". As usual with Fursaxa there is a heavy, ritualistic feel to much of the material, but some of it is so dilated and weirdly-arranged - with hypnotic, F/X mutated spoken word and huge sighs of almost Penderecki/Crumb-esque vocal smears - that it touches on the outer-space hysteria of Euro-heads like Zweistein or Catherine Ribeiro and Alpes more than any contemporary US 'drone', albeit refracted through early music and madrigal stylings. It all ends with one of the most spell-binding movements in her entire catalogue, with a chaos of vocal hiss functioning as a long, slow pan through the kind of fog-bound territory previously mapped by Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann as Mirror. One of her darkest and most otherworldly set of space-whispers to date. Highly recommended.

Debut CD from this new group project of Andrew Chalk’s featuring Vikki Jackman, Brendan Walls and Robin Barnes. Two long tracks, recorded May 2005, with a heavier sound than Chalk’s solo work, with shifting tectonic tones giving way to dooming bells and rusty clouds of mediaeval tone ala Keiji Haino’s Nijiumu or the first Toho Sara album. But it’s very much a group record and it feels like there’s more playing here than on most Chalk records, with a degree of interaction that is as ghostly as it is forceful, with organic forms blossoming and dying in a void of endlessly deep darkness. Beautifully packaged as ever by Andrew in handmade gatefold sleeves with Japanese obi strips.

New release on Sachiko’s (Kousokuya/Overhang Party et al) label from this female psychedelic Japanese underground accordionist. Gabriel has previously collaborated with Keiji Haino and he appeared on three tracks on her 2001 Utsuho album for Tzadik. Her style is somewhere between Palestine/Riley-styled overtone heavy repeat-o minimalism, authentic gipsy/folk styles and melancholy Japanese psychedelia. Itsukushimi combines rolling folk laments with investigations of the furthest reaches of the instrument, working high puffs of tone into long-seconds of silence ala Masayohsi Urabe one minute, huffing like Dolly Collins the next: “She crosses the border between pop field and avant-garde flexibly. Her silent improvised sound is beautiful and nostalgic like folklore, in her exotica with tenderness, are hidden fortitude and energy.” – MA. 

Debut CD from Sachiko of Japanese psych rockers Overhang Party and all-female tone-float duo Vava Kitora (as well as ex-Kousokuya) is an immediate candidate for album of the year. First few tracks combine a totally beautiful smoke of high wordless vocals with a sponge of star-scattered tones and a depth-of-field you could free-float in for days that feels somewhere between a more Kosmiche take on Grouper's breath constructions, the slow skull-trephing beauty of Taj Mahal Travellers, aspects of early liturgical chant, that classic lost-in-the-woods private press feel, Heather Leigh's solo vocal/noise ferocity and the beautiful metal/mediaeval chorales of Keiji Haino's classic Nijiumu recording, Era Of Sad Wings. Later tracks flit between ferocious loops of Junko/Waters-style vocal hysteria and dynamic rock-derived electronic noise and still pools of purple trance before the last track blows the whole album to a single feather. Impossibly beautiful and one of the best albums to come out of the Japanese underground this year. Comes with a beautiful full-colour cover with obi and jewel case. Highest possible recommendation.

Very pleased to welcome Bill Shute’s new run of limited edition CD-Rs on his Kendra Steiner Editions after an inspired run of poetry chapbooks. Rogers is an Austin-based sound thinker and Circum_Navigate is a 19 minute piece scored for tactile fuzz, keyboard and radio sounds that sits somewhere between Keith Rowe’s work with AMM and the work of Pita and the Mego cabal. An odd, stately beauty to this: “Austin-based musician-composer Derek Rogers recently premiered this haunting electronic composition at the NMASS Festival in June 2010, and the week after that he went into the studio and recorded this 19-minute version for KSE… feel the sting of the contact mic, bathe in the drone, climb the fuzzed-out steps to speaker-shredding bliss…Derek will be playing the Neon Marshmallow Festival in Chicago in August, and will be selling this cdr, but why wait? edition of 75 hand-numbered copies.” – KSE.

Latest vinyl installment from the cracked universe of Sam Merinque of Outer Limits Recordings/Yoga/Matrix Metals/Explorers/Flashback Repository/James Ferraro’s 90210 et al. Foxy Baby is a startling proposition: it makes you wonder about the mysterious Meringue’s involvement in Ferraro’s Lamborghini Crystal project. The guitar sounds come straight out of that same microwaved zone and the lurid stylings sound like 1980s mall pop broadcast through nth generation wiped-out cassette dubs, complete with head-shredding suburban metal guitar solos, dreamy synth pop fantasies, invasions of rubbered alien vocals and hallucinatory FM radio vibes. Even some devolved takes on the furcoats and champagne style of the second Suicide album. As chillwave becomes synonymous with simply having bad taste in music, this is the real hypnagogic magic, altering consensus zombie reality via memory vague strategies and usurping lo-fi strategies. Massively addictive and strangely affecting: Foxy Baby really gets under your skin. But where does Ferraro end and Meringue (or Raphael as Ferraro insists on calling him) begin? “Of all the magical inverse-universe warp-zone pop-whiplash geniuses loosed upon the world by the shortlived Outer Limits Recordings corporation, few of them deserve their pedestal status as righteously as the Foxy Baby LP. Recorded two summers ago in Berlin amidst constant nocturnal glitter-blinded visits to extraterrestrial discotheques, the album tells the strange, fragmented story of a young weirdo artist who has an encounter with an exotic otherworldly woman (the titular Ms. Foxy Baby), becomes obsessed, loses her into the cosmic blur of the city, then slips backstage at one of her shows to find her, where they mysteriously share a final cigarette while staring out across the metropolis’ skyline, then ascend into a holy void of alien lights. Or something? The specifics are tricky to pin down, but the songs say it all: tape hiss-soaked glam-damaged new wave dream-rock anthems interspersed with tripped FX interludes of revving cars, astral bubbles, and murky sparkling echoes. A total bizarro masterpiece from one of our favorite masterpiece-makers on the planet. Lipstick-colored vinyl LPs in trashy zebra-print inner sleeves in a jacket with artwork by Mr. Outer Limits himself. Edition of 500.” – NNF. Highly recommended.

Killer solo album by Steve Krakow aka Plastic Crimewave Sound, inaugurating Bill Shute’s newly-launched music wing of his fantastic underground poetry empire Kendra Steiner Editions. This one sees Crimewave letting loose on guitar, banjo and raagini, with a heavy MV/Spectrasound style that combines monolithic dreamweapon psych and pickled rural ragas: “Brand-new studio album of long, deep, Indian-flavored solo pieces (with two Krautrock-flavored interludes to vary the texture) from Chicago’s legendary psychedelic shaman. Truly, a higherkey experience. Hand-numbered edition of 75 copies.” – KSE.

Released on a new sub-division of the great Italian avant garde label Alga Marghen, this is an excellent experimental summit between the French Gol orchestra of Jean-Marcel Busson, Frédéric Rebotier, Ravi Sharda and Samon Takahashi (a group dedicated to a “lost rural tradition within a post-Dada spirit” and who use flute, horns, guitar, violin, toys, self-manufactured instruments, tapes, turntables, voices, various percussion instruments and electronics) and minimalist composer, pianist and artist Charlemagne Palestine. Here Palestine plays a church organ in the St. Eustache church in Paris while Gol use electronics, bass, guitar and flutes to create a “pagan ritual”. This is a wild set, peaking in plateau after plateau of explosive organ sonorities, waves of electronic drones and clusters of overtone activity that bears comparison to the soundtrack actions of Hermann Nitsch as much as the ecstatic noise of Richard Youngs and Vibracathedral Orchestra. A fantastic side, limited to only 300 copies. Recommended.

Deluxe limited edition LP with gold sleeves and multiple inserts released on a new sub-division of the great Italian avant garde label Alga Marghen from a one-off group that features Dave Nuss and Keith Connolly of The No-Neck Blues Band alongside Timo Van Luyk (In Camera/Af Ursin) and Raymond Dijkstra (Asra). Reputedly inspired by the work of Japanese film-maker Kyoshi Kurosowa and the theories of Franz Mesmer this is a spare, hypnotic set that combines a lot of low-level string and percussion work with a weird electronic/synth tonal centre making it a little bit more ‘explicable’ than much NNCK product while lending the tracks the feel of extended elegiac codas. Beautiful, delicate improvised music by four modern masters of the language, though reports suggest that this will be the first and last document of this brief collaboration. Edition of only 300 copies.

I was gabbing with a pal in the shop this week when I described some group as a ‘poor man’s Flower-Corsano’. My friend was quick to set me straight. Who isn’t a poor man’s Flower-Corsano?, he said. Duh, point taken. This latest limited self-released album, You’ll Never Work In This Town Again, is a continuation of the euphoric form of their previous Chocolate Cities release with three beautifully recorded live tracks from Pittsburgh and NYC in October of 2009. The opening 17-minute explosion sounds like a fleet of berserkers playing amphetamine bagpipe music with all of the end of the world gladness/sadness of the Albert Ayler Orchestra. Mick creates these impossible tangles of steel that are as implosive as any Eurasian ritual music while cutting them up with Jimi-at-Woodstock levels of squeal. But it’s the speed of ideas, the ten-arm dexterity of Corsano, the endlessly mutating riffs, that really blows your mind. The second 19-minute track starts out in more languorous fashion, with Mick playing a spare eulogy that Corsano swiftly marches all the way over the horizon, while the  closing 7 minute piece feels more like a coda, with Mick slowly unwinding a spiral of melody while Corsano dances all around it. Truly, one of the premier energy music duos of this or any other age. Highly recommended. 

Fascinating collection of work from Jean-Louis Brau, a member of the pre-Situationist Lettrist International alongside Gil Wolman and Isidore Isou. Brau was an artist, writer, soldier, radical, sound poet, brothel owner and drug dealer with a biography that’d make Blaise Cendrars blush. In 1973 he gave up all artistic work completely. This album compiles a bunch of the surviving recordings, including two tape pieces that were played during Isou’s conference at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1961, two pieces first published in the Poesie Physique book that came with three singles, one by Brau, one by Dufrene and one by Wolman, and a wild 1972 track with freakout Wildman drumming – “Turnback Nightingale” - that first came out in Poesie en question, Opus International. The sonics run from grainy sound poetry and tape work that pre-dates the Chocolate Monk aesthetic by a bunch of decades through barbaric non-musical actions and convulsive epiglottal gymnastics. Pretty amazing. Edition of 350 copies. 

Double LP reissue of this 1972 album from the legendary Speed, Glue & Shinki, Japan’s most dysfunctional power trio. Wrapped in a sleeve designed by Michihiro Kimura of Taj Mahal Travellers, this self-titled double album documents the group’s drug-addled implosion while expanding the thug-psych styles of their debut by bring in Moogs and aiming their third eyes towards the stars, with trippy electronics squelched under foot by mile high riffs and a rhythm section that is pure Frankenstein.

Finally got a bunch of copies of this inspired collection of poetry, sex memoirs, paeans to post-rock poon and subcultural subterfuge by one of the most consistently savvy wordsmiths of the post-literate underground, Mr Byron Coley. Printed back in 2003 in an edition of 100 copies by Tom and Christina Carter of Charalambides, this one went precisely nowhere for reasons that are buried beneath many, many hangovers but here it is, finally. Stapled, A4 format with a buncha poems that touch on subjects as close to your heart as Jayne Mansfield's corpse, Barbara Bush's puke, Touch & Go Records, Lester Young and Albert Einstein, early-60s glamour, shaven versus unshaven armpits, Genesis P-Orridge and Jordi Valls, the art of the money shot, Alice Coltrane and a whole bunch more worthwhile musings on lady hair from a guy who does little else but. Highly recommended.

Much requested CD reissue of this hard-to-score Charalambides release, originally issued as a Peter King lathe LP on Eclipse in an edition of only 100 copies. Dedicated to Bruce Connor, it features inkblot artwork by Heather Leigh. The sonics are supremely dilated and fully orbit the kinda late-90s/early ‘00s mystery zone that would combine extended improvisatory modes ala FMP/Incus with F/X clouded dreamtone works, gorgeous otherworldly vocals from Christina and sudden surges of volume pedal gliss from Tom. This is still one of their most beautifully fucked recordings and speaks of their ability to inhabit the furthest edges of form while still sounding like the best rock band of your life. Can’t think of anyone today who could pull off the same kind of seamless psychedelic schizophrenia with such fucking aplomb. A great record from a great group, highly recommended.

"Long-, long-, long-, loooooong-awaited and singular entry in the Charalambides and Klang Industries discographies; one of those does it really exist? items thats finally seeing daylight, or moonlight. A stark, unsettling and beautiful slice of duo Charalambides invocation/incantation, taken from the period between Jason Bill and Heather Leigh Murrays tenures with the band and featuring extraordinary chord organ and vocal work from Christina and some signature lap steel mastery from Tom. Fans of the bands most recent, more song-based work will find this revelatory, long-time listeners will say ahhhh and settle in for the flight. Heavy vinyl, limited pressing, covers handiwork by Tom, the first release in years from Klang and a sign perhaps of a truly epic revival." "Long-awaited Klang debut of Charalambides. This record has been brewing since 2000, and is now finally available under the auspices of Eclipse/Klang. Two side-long improvisations in much the same vein as IN CR EA SE, a bit more topographical perhaps, but still horizontally serene and horizonless. Chord organ, lap steel, vocals." --Wholly Other.

Gorgeous double vinyl reissue of what still stands as one of Christina Carter’s finest moments, originally issued in an edition of 300 copies on her own Many Breaths Press. This edition comes in a run of only 500 copies pressed on red vinyl and with an etching by Christina on the fourth side. Lace Heart consolidates the spooked overdubbed form first plotted on Human As Guitar. Her guitar playing veers away from her earlier single-notes-dropped-into-deep-black-space approach and instead focuses on drugged, metronomic chords and weird inverted blues runs over which overdubbed/reverbed vocals cycle like sad constellations. Beautifully atmospheric songs and another classic of Jandek/Haino-style late-night soul stasis. A comparatively hi-fi recording from Christina too. Highly recommended.

Follow-up to the first volume of this on-going series that joins the dots between an earlier generation of American Primitive guitarists and contemporary intuitive sound-as-thought players. Once again Jack Rose is featured (with an absolutely gorgeous 6 string re-think of "Cross The North Fork 2") but every other player puts in a first-time appearance on this volume. The inclusion of Christina Carter is a particularly inspired move and one that speaks of the liberated range of the series in general and her track is a beauty, a stubby acoustic guitar miniature. Nice cover snap too. Other tracks include a particularly mesmeric recording from UK guitarist James Blackshaw and contributions from Peter Lang, Jesse Sparhawk, Michael Chapman, Sean Smith, Fred Gerlach, Billy Faier, Sharron Kraus, Robbie Basho and...uh...Jose Gonzalez. Another rich, far-sighted assortment from this great label.

Where do we even begin with this one? Anyone who thinks they might have finally got their head around the prodigious arc of Richard Young’s recent catalogue is gonna have to throw their hands in the air: Urban Parable is a new group project from Richard and Andrew Paine that masquerades as a mysterious unit coming out of the 90s rave scene (?!?) – think Ilk playing the dance tent dressed in white jump suits, sucking on menthol inhalers and waving glo-sticks. Or don’t. Richard’s soaring vocals are married to euphoric techno, brokedown drum and bass, primitive house and block rocking beats in one of the most unlikely recordings of his entire career. If you thought Ultrahits was a bold step into the pop void then this is really going to confuse you, 90s techno completely misconstrued. Obviously, you need to hear it. Edition of only 50 copies though, so better make it quick. Highest possible confusion. 

Mind-blowing reissue of one of the all-time greatest Japanese underground artefacts, Far Out’s epic 1973 stone, Nihonjin. Far Out, led by Fumio Miyashita, would eventually morph into the kosmische synth outfit Far East Family Band but this proto-debut remains the most wailing, guitar-heavy statement of his career. The album consists of two long tracks ala the early Ash Ra Tempel albums, the 18 minute “Too Many People” and the 20 minute title track. “Too Many People” emerges from a void of delay and the sound of winds blowing through space to a triumphal phased keyboard intro that in turn gives way to a simple, descending guitar pattern and an aching lead vocal that is blown apart by some of the most ecstatic single note guitar histrionics of your lifetime. The effect is comparable to Funkadelic’s side-long Maggot Brain jam, with a clean fuzz sound exploding in arcs of tone over a crunching rhythm section. The title track brings in some sitar and heavier raga stylings and another beautifully bleak vocal over loose nod-out rhythms but the destination is still guitar oblivion, with more endless soloing to the point of destruction. A total classic, back in print. Packaged in a gatefold sleeve, this was in Julian Cope’s Japrocksampler Top 50. Highly recommended.