summary 
Monday, 20 May
Review to follow shortly…
Thursday, 09 May
**Totally deadly, mind-melting psych-rock grooves by Acid Mothers Temple guitar genius Kawabata Makoto with Kawabe Taigen and Shimura Koji. A must for the heads!** "One of the most celebrated Japanese Underground bands have returned! It may have taken over 12 years, but Kawabata Makoto, guitar guru and head honcho in Acid Mothers Temple, has finally decided to get his celebrated 'psychedelic solid free attack group' back together. Joining original Mainliner members Kawabata Makoto (motorpsycho guitar) and Koji Shimura (drums) is new recruit Kawabe Taigen (bass/vocals) and t… Read more
Justly hyped debut album proper from New York scream-queen Margaret Chardier, RIYL Prurient, Wolf Eyes, TG, Swans, Gravetemple. At just 22 years old, Chardier is already a hugely respected presence on her native noise scene, bringing a confrontational yet deeply personal, diaristic intensity to her performances that’s as exhilarating as it is discomfiting. Abandon captures this volatile energy, but it’s not a live document, it’s a nuanced, atmospheric and ravishingly well-recorded showcase of Pharmakon’s infernal weaponry, traversing toxic power electronics, guttural doom chords, eldritch ambience an… Read more
Thursday, 25 April
CD // £12.99*New edition with a new colourway on the sleeve* A 3rd titanic Kraut/Psyche-rock face-off from Manchester's bonglords, Gnod, and New York's space cadets, White Hills. They first met under the light of seven moons on 'Aquarian Downer' in 2008, followed by the first 'Drop Out' album for Drug Space Records in 2009, whilst the intervening years have seen a flurry of individual rituals occurring on NNF, Blackest Rainbow and Thrill Jockey, to name a few. It's difficult, and probably pointless trying to figure out who contributes what, because it's all just one mass of energ… Read more
Wednesday, 10 April
Thursday, 28 March
**Primal, passionate blend of shoegaze, post-rock and massive synth and guitar noise on the Chicago group's 2nd album for Kranky** "The band Implodes has, on their previous albums, tapped into the deep psychic recesses where our sonic memories first took shape. They have played the part of the ancient ancestor, lying submerged in the shallows, waiting to make its gambit onto dry land and into a new world. With their new album, Recurring Dream, Implodes breathes fresh air. Melodies that were once distant echoes are now suffused with energy and clarity of purpose, submerged rhythms now walk in th… Read more
Thursday, 21 March
*Edition of 500 hand packaged CD's with foil blocked sleeves* On 8th October, 2011, Aidan Baker darkened the doorstep of Southern studios for the 2nd time, accompanied on this occasion by his Nadja tourmates, Plurals, aka Daniel McKenzie (synth/guitar), Dave Hamilton Smith (voice), Duncan Harrison (synth/tapes), Michael Neaves (tapes), Pete Dodd (synth). What followed is documented here; two sides of sprawling, intricately-layered drones and atmospheres oscillating between threatening and uplifting.
'Aneira' is Aidan Baker's impressionistic electro-acoustic tribute to the romantic image of "ice moving or breaking and wind or snowstorms", using only his favoured 12-string guitar. It shimmers and unfolds as one, long, 47-minute piece rendering slow-moving harmonics and trickling barely-melodies from his spindly string picks. "Aidan Baker is a multi-instrumentalist, classically-trained in flute, but best known as a guitarist. Using various electronic effects combined with prepared and/or alternate methods of playing the guitar, he creates music which generally falls within the ambient/experimental… Read more
Thursday, 14 March
**Double disc jewel case** Veteran artist Phil Niblock, now in his mid-seventies, has probably composed more drone pieces than you've had hot dinners. In fact, given this album's existence, he might have actually composed more drone pieces about hot dinners than you've had... you get the picture. Touch Food is a collaboration with some top flight avant-garde musicians: pianist Reinhold Friedl, saxophonist Ulrich Krieger, clarinettist Carol Robinson and Kaspar T. Toeplitz on electric bass. These musicians have their respective performances transfigured into towering, sustaining structures, ofte… Read more
ISENGRIND / TWINSISTERMOON / NATURAL SNOW BUILDINGS
BA DA BING
2CD // £13.99
NOW: £7.99
Cat. Number: BING083
Gatefold slipcase reissue of this spellbinding trilogy of LPs by the supernaturally talented Solange Gularte and Mehdi Ameziane. Originally issued in 2008, it now reappears to accompany the first, overdue vinyl issues of all three albums. For those unfamiliar with these works, the duo have created a magical other-world of ethereal sonics both solo and together, an often desolate and chilling place, sometimes streaked with blissful pastoral folk strums and drones which feel like wandering through someone's private fantasy, with their permission. Highly recommended if you like Grouper, Lichens, Julianna Barwick, Ilyas Ahmed...
*CD version packaged in 4 panel mini-LP style gatefold package with high gloss printing* "Black Pus is the solo project of Brian Chippendale of noise rock titans Lightning Bolt and Mindflayer. 'All My Relations’ is the first Black Pus album to be recorded in a proper studio, entrusting recording and production to Keith Souza and Seth Manchester (who have worked with The Body, Battles and Skull Defekts) at Machines With Magnets in Pawtucket, RI. ‘All My Relations’ follows a series of self-released CDrs and 2011’s album ‘Primordial Pus’ (Load Records). In addition to his work in both Lightning… Read more
Wednesday, 06 March
*Now Reissued At Midprice* As with the third release in the Super Roots series, this disc is occupied by a single, track. In this instance though, that track is over an hour long and takes the form of a swirling miasma of molten, dismantled garage rock drone and power electronics. While the piece (appropriately titled, 'GO!!!!!') maintains a sense of flux and dynamism throughout, its intensity never lets up. The intermingling of searing guitar and clanging cymbals washes over you in a succession of vicious waves. It's staggering to think that this is coming up to being twelve years old - it sound… Read more
*Now Reissued At Midprice* The material on this third Super Roots release immediately preceded the release of the Chocolate Synthesizer album, in what would prove to be a big year for the band - they even played on that year's Lollapalooza tour. It's hard to envisage Boredoms as a commercially attractive proposition on the grounds of a release like this, however. Super Roots 3 consists of a single, half-hour long track, 'Hard Trance Takeaway (Karaoke of Cosmos)' which is a slab of frantic drumming and fuzzed-out guitar goop flowing like endless streams of lava. I certainly wouldn't want to stipul… Read more
*Now Reissued At Midprice* My goodness me, it's time for more crucial (and incredibly long-awaited) Boredoms re-issues, and this particular one has always been a favourite of mine. Under-appreciated possibly due to its outright abstraction in place of the balls out manic-rock we might expect, Super Roots 6 is actually a record that manages to surprise me on each and every listen. Textural and brave up until the very last note, the idea that this came out over ten years ago is shocking; the band mix noise, electronics and free rock in a way which would have the knees of almost any Load Records Pro… Read more
*Now Reissued At Midprice* Out of print for far too long and getting the deluxe treatment from those nice chaps over at Very Friendly (maybe they really are... who knows?) comes the seventh instalment in Japanese super-group the Boredoms' incredibly good collection of oddities entitled 'Super Roots'. This particular disc sees the band moving into a new and shockingly good direction, and after experimenting with drones and hiccupping radio-static on 'Super Roots 6', we now catch the band in full-on freak-out Kraut-rock mode. This is space rock as space rock should sound, all pounding percussion an… Read more
*Now Reissued At Midprice* Another dynamite instalment in the Boredoms truly essential 'Super Roots' series, this sees the band on a more electronic tip, with different members contributing slightly off-kilter (okay, VERY off-kilter) remixes of the initial track, itself a cover of a well-known anime theme song. So you know where we're going with this then, and the record starts as it means to go on with the Boredoms own take on the theme; all super-fast drumming, wailing and abstract electronics. This is what breakcore would sound like if it was made by a full band and re-worked by David Lynch I … Read more
Thursday, 31 January
*Brand new edition of Grouperʼs breakthrough 2008 album which has been out of print on all physical formats for the last few years* Here's what we had to say about the album when it first came out on Type 5 years ago: "With the label's hiatus well and truly over, Type Records follows up Peter Broderick's amazing 'Float' with a brand new album of midnight Shoegazer classics from Portland's Liz Harris - and it really is one of the most special albums you'll hear this year. While the filtered, tape-fuelled obfuscation of her signature sound remains, Dragging A Dead De… Read more
Thursday, 06 December
**Numbered edition of 1000 housed in die-cut and foil-blocked jacket with insert** Doom rock pioneer, influential drone-master, occultist and professed anglophile, Dylan Carlson ov Earth comissioned by the Southern studios on 16th April, 2012 to record six covers and one original song, found on his latest Drcarlsonalbion issue. Accompanied by Teresa Colamonaco on vocals and Jodie Cox on guitar, 'La Strega and The Cunning Man In The Smoke' continues a progression from his ace instrumental recordings for The Tapeworm to the more recent, collaboration-oriented wo… Read more
Thursday, 08 November
Francisco López's 275th untitled release (how lazy!) delineates two movements: a 20 minute composition for mechanically-prepared piano performed by Ensemble M.A.E.'s Reinier van Houdt; a corresponding 'Evolutionary Studio Transformation' by López. Movement 1 was recorded live in concert at De Toonzaal (s'Hertogenbosch) on February 10th 2011 and oscillates between unyielding jackhammer rhythms punched out on strings, to passages of pristine, organised quietude. Movement 2 is a radical inversion of the first part, transforming its clear, pointillist rhythms into expansive bass hits, sheer, b… Read more
ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO UFO
Iao Chart From The Melting Paraiso Underground Freak Out
Riot Season
CD // £11.99
Cat. Number: REPOSECD032
*CD packaged in gatefold card sleeve (first edition only)* "Acid Mothers Temple return with an expanded Melting Paraiso U.F.O. line up featuring the added guitar skills of Japan underground legend and new full time member Tabata Mitsuru (Boredoms, Zeni Gava, Leningrad Blues Machine etc) 'IAO Chant From The Melting Paraiso Underground Freak Out' finds the band revisiting the past and once again taking Gong's infamous 'Om Riff/Master Builder' to soaring new heights. This is a completely new studio version recorded in a n… Read more
Thursday, 01 November
Not a band who would ever want you to think they're not hard working, Portland's Eternal Tapestry drop their second album of the year in the shape of 'A World Out Of Time', a typically THC-laced, e-bow worshipping journey into the ether. Garnished with a cover the looks like a sci fi version of the ending of 'From Dusk Til Dawn' there's a sense that the band are aware of how they're perceived and are running with it full throttle. The result is a non-stop acid-belching hayride through walls of thick electric guitar, pummeling percussion (courtesy as usual of Heavy Winged's Jed Bind… Read more
Thursday, 25 October
'Honor Found in Decay' is famed doom metal outsiders Neurosis's tenth studio album, and while that might seem like more than a handful, they have been around for almost twenty-five years. Each new album has taken the band to different spaces, from the chunky riffage of their early work to the dangerous avant garde experimentation of their later records, and 'Honor Found in Decay' does a great job of welding the band's interests together into one coherent whole. With a molasses-slow war march the North Western band somehow avoid easy comparison with other bands - they're neither as droney … Read more
Thursday, 18 October
'Aethyr Jumpers' marks the unheimlich return of Mark Godwin and Gareth Ormerod aka zK, a pair of respected ambient conceptualists with a discography including work for Coil, Forced Nostalgia and Skam. It's a haunting piece of work, arranging sombre solo piano around a morphing backdrop of noxiously gaseous electro-acoustic textures, mottled rhythms and disembodied voices, all pieced together with a slowly revealing, ritualist agenda that commands focussed observation, interaction and listening through each of its seven stages.
Thursday, 04 October
""White Lightning" is a monstrous pound of sonic heaviness, psychedelic approaches and emotional riffage - ingredients that, if mixed together with love for the music can bring stunning results. Like here. OBELYSKKH fear no boundaries and no flavour of the heavy: "White Lightning" draws from pure sludge filth through psychedelic soundscapes into postrock and back. Sure, this album is heavy and massive but it also breathes some kinda repetitive mantra-like ambition, which clears the air here and there and thus declines total negativity. "White Lightning" was recorded, mixed and mastered in wint… Read more
Thursday, 27 September
Excellent double album of bombastic melody filtered through noise and black metal aesthetics.
"Internationally-acclaimed ensemble Zeitkratzer tackles folk music on their project Neue Volksmusik (New Folk Music). Zeitkratzer approaches folk music in its essence: constant transformation. Genuine folk music is what it is due to an inherent state of flux, defined by its constantly changing nature. It is in fact an authentic practice for Zeitkratzer to claim different musical traditions, taking possession of them and forming them to fit specific ideas. This project started in 2009 when Zeitkratzer presented Volksmusik (ZKR 002CD), an anarchic ethno-musicological journey through the Danub… Read more
Thursday, 20 September
"Carlton Melton take their organic improvised psych-jam to the highest sonic plane befitting the geodesic dome in which it was recorded and pulverizing the psychedelic hypno-drone that has come before. Photos of Photos is a testament of Carlton Melton's ability to bottle and hone their craft with sincerity - from the lush pastoral sonics of 'Nor' Easter' and title track, 'Photos of Photos' the smoldering gargantuan riffs of 'Space Treader' and the synth drones and spare rhythms of LP closer 'Wingspan'. Carlton Melton meld -what could be a heavy indecipherable psychedelic mess - into som… Read more
Thursday, 16 August
Diving a similar route to his Barn Owl bandmate, Jon Porras, Evan Caminiti refines and channels the expansive visions of his gorgeous 'Night Dust' LP into the midnight bliss of 'Dreamless Sleep' for his solo Thrill Jockey debut. Perhaps accepting of the times, synths are far more prevalent across 'Dreamless Sleep', used to beautifully accentuate his somnambulant intent. As he states, the emphasis is on memory recollection, or rather how we struggle to recollect and organise our memories after the fact : "The first version of the album - a kind of rough draft - was completed in San Francis… Read more
Thursday, 02 August
'Dopesmoker' is an important record, let's get that out of the way first. Originally recorded back in 1995, it languished in mostly unreleased form until 2003 when Sleep (the unholy trinity of Al Cisneros, Chris Hakius and Matt Pike) finally started getting the attention they always deserved. Fans of all things Sunn o))) and Earth will probably have heard it before, but let me be the first to say that this brand new remastered edition is the finest iteration of the record I've heard. The monolithic hour-long piece now sounds wider, thicker and doomier than ever before and Brad Boatright has given it t… Read more
Thursday, 19 July
GUARDIAN ALIEN
See The World Given To A One Love Entity
Thrill Jockey
CD // £13.99
Cat. Number: THRILL313CD
Review to follow shortly…
