Pond are one of the most versatile, inquisitive, and accomplished bands of the psychedelic rock vanguard.

The last four Pond albums have been showcases of tidiness and brevity, 10 ideas always tucked into 40 minutes or so. But on Stung!, they gleefully, madly, and wilfully lean into double-LP largesse, tapping the spirit of Tusk and Sign ‘O’ the Times by funnelling 14 songs into the most unfettered and splendid hour of their recording career.

Stung! delivers some of Pond’s most glorious rock songs ever and also some of their least rock moments, all psychedelic drapery or funk vim. In that epic, as in Stung! at large, Allbrook speaks to our collective modern paradox of being disappointed in or even disconsolate over a world that we know more about than any prior generation but also being in awe of it and (sometimes) each other, too.

There are so many reasons to cry and so many reasons to marvel. Can’t they all, Pond suggests with Stung!, be reasons to sing?

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
Constant Picnic
(I’m) Stung
Neon River
SIDE B
So Lo
Black Lung
Sunrise For The Lonely
Elf Bar Blues
SIDE C
Edge Of The World Pt. 3
Stars In Silken Sheets
Boys Don’t Crash
SIDE D
O, UV Ray
Last Elvis
Elephant Gun
Fell From Grace With The Sea

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 20TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 22ND.

Bardo Pond’s extensive archive recordings series opens up once again with 'Volume 9', an incisive journey into their hypnotic sound. Recorded in the early 2000’s it’s a heady mix of acoustic ambience and menacing distortion.

Infamous purveyors of longform stoner rock, Bardo Pond embrace their sludgestorms with graceful nods to Hawkwind, Earth and my bloody valentine. For anyone uninitiated with the band’s tranquilizing sound, Volume 9 leans into their mesmeric practise with reckless abandon.

Featuring two tracks recorded with ace percussionist Michael Zanghi (Kurt Vile/The War On Drugs) and the seminal two parter ‘War Is Over’, a lilting Floydian strum that’s invaded – quite literally – by unreconstructed noise. The Zanghi collaboration is an Eastern-facing mantra with percussive flurries and distorted modal shifts – like listening on the other side of feedback.

“Effortlessly combining psychedelic inspirations from Pink Floyd's original explorations to the more modern reachings into the beyond” AllMusic.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 – Conjunctio
A2 – The Nine Doubts
A3 – War Is Over Part 1

Side B
B1 – War Is Over Part 2

10th anniversary clear, black and white splatter vinyl reissue of 'Peace on Venus' by Bardo Pond, Philadelphia's foremost purveyors of psychedelic rock. Includes ‘Kali Yuga Blues’, a true behemoth of a song and a shining example of the band’s ecstatic intensity.

Delving deep in to their subconscious to bring it to the conscious, the band’s 2013 effort dazzles, with their gift for heavy riffs laced with soaring vocals and swathes of sound. Bardo Pond has the outward specifications of a rock band but the rivers that converge into the band's oneiric flow have their headwaters in the outlands of ecstatic jazz, free noise and the avant-garde.

The recording process of ‘Peace On Venus’ used the principle of the Quintessence, which is a principle cited by the 16th Century physician Paracelsus, who noted: "Nothing of true value is located in the body of a substance, but in the virtue thereof, and this is the principle of the Quintessence, which reduces, say 20 lbs. of a given substance into a single Ounce, and that ounce far exceeds the 20 lbs. in potency. Hence the less there is of body, the more in proportion is the virtue thereof."

“Obviously, Bardo Pond are the greatest band in the world” Vice.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Kali Yuga Blues
A2 Taste
A3 Fir
B1 Chance
B2 Before The Moon

Kristin Hersh’s new album is a cinematic road trip; a series of personal vignettes from a fiercely independent auteur, sitting plush with layers of all-consuming strings and mellotron. It’s a watershed moment in a career overflowing with creative firsts and inspirational thinking; an elegant piece of personal reportage, a home movie caught in time.

Previously, the juxtaposition of light and dark has been essential to the drama of Throwing Muses and 50FOOTWAVE, but this solo set is something of a departure; more inward looking, quieter but outspoken, underpinned by background noise for ambience and awkwardness.

“Passion sounds less angry, more grateful, I think,” Kristin muses, “sweeter, sadder. And somehow, no less alive… over car engines and rain in New England and whistling ducks and wind chimes in New Orleans, it all sounds wistful to me.”

‘Clear Pond Road’ is a life-affirming statement, a further part of the jigsaw, a very personal memoir, from street signs to snapshots; a late blossoming and coming-of-age from a true icon of independence. The record is both intimate yet expansive, written largely within the confines of Hersh’s home, making the proceedings ever more personal.

“Few artists understand the intensity of living one’s art like Hersh” The Guardian

“A fearless rock innovator” New York Times.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Bewitched Reruns
A2 Ms Haha
A3 Dandelion
A4 Constance Street
A5 Thank You, Corner Blight
Side B
B1 St. Valentines Day Massacre
B2 Reflections On The Motive Power Of Fire
B3 Eyeshine
B4 Palmetto
B5 Tunnels

“Obviously, Bardo Pond are the greatest band in the world” VICE

Super rare recordings from 2002 and pressed on vinyl for the very first time. The third in the band’s series of limited-edition releases showcasing jam sessions and other miscellany. Like Fugazi on acid, a rage for the Velvets, a mantra with real purity of tone.

Somewhere between the ‘Dilate’ album in 2001 (“a combination of Kyuss and Spacemen 3” NME) and ‘On the Ellipse’ in 2003 ("Nowhere is feedback more melancholic, more emotive, than that fashioned by Bardo Pond” Brainwashed), Bardo Pond transcended into a mantra-like, multi-layered, cross-dimensional, wah wah powered nirvana.

In some circles, they say, spaceships wafted them away and they only returned some-time later, mind-altered and bedraggled, ears ringing. But that is the stuff of supposition.

As we already know, there is no ‘off’ switch on Bardo Pond, they are never knowingly unplugged. Indeed, the modal evolution of their sound continues unabated.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Sifaka
A2 Ecstasy Dub
Side B
B1 Lomand
Side C
C1 Tanked
C2 Trimurti
Side D
D1 Blue Turban 

Pronounced 'CLIT DRIP' for those confused or too shy to ask, CLT DRP have been turning heads since 2017. The genre-bending trio's non-apologetic and yet playful approach has seen them garner praise from The Line Of Best Fit, Gigwise, and plenty more. Their music gets you moving, invites you in with power, and makes you question your environment and yourself. In their time, CLT DRP have already supported Nova Twins, Warmduscher, among others, and performed at 2000 trees and ArcTanGent festivals.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Aftermath
B1. Aftermath (Big Moon Cover)

“The album is titled ‘Movements’ because it has changes in feeling and energy throughout. When I was first putting songs together for the album I had a lot of sad songs and I felt like an important part of me was missing from it. So I later added some songs to express that happy and fun side of myself. It makes a lot of sense to me, because emotions are not consistent, to at least have one album that goes through those movements, and I choose this to be that album.

I also went back to my roots a little during the pandemic and decided I really missed gymnastics – my childhood obsession. So I spent a lot of time stretching and exercising, hoping to go back to it once things were safe again. As it happened I took up dancing instead for something new, but that also influenced the title as I was working on the album throughout the pandemic.

I learnt so much making this album because it was the first time I wrote all of the arrangements myself, demoed out in full before entering the studio. It was a challenge I set myself and I also learnt a lot more about recording and mixing through this process – something I want to do more of as I continue writing. Another goal I set myself was to be able to write piano songs with vocals which I’d never done before, so there are quite a few of those on this album.

I recorded the album in Hastings with producer Martin Ruffin who I also worked with on my previous releases. It was mixed by Martin Ruffin and mastered by Aneek Thapar.” – Natalie Evans

TRACK LISTING

1.Driving Home Late
2. Between The Ground And Sky
3. Movie
4. Pencil Drawn
5. Interlude (Back Of My Mind)
6. Colours Fade
7. Sun Song
8. Under The Moon
9. When You Leave
10. To Go On
11. Five Positives
12. Guest Room

In Pond’s universe nothing stays still for long. Although no one who heard 2019’s “Tasmania” could possibly describe its pulsating psych-pop as straight, Pond wanted to try a more spontaneous way of working for their next record. Taking a leaf out of krautrock outliers Can’s book, at the start of 2020, Pond embarked on a series of totally off-the-cuff jam sessions from which songs and ideas could be pulled out.

Given the pace at which ideas whizz past your head, it makes for a dizzying listen. Opener Song For Agnes explodes out the speakers like an intergalactic rock opera, running a synapse-tingling gauntlet through bubbling synth pop, 80s hair metal and blissed out saxophone before you know what’s hit you.

It’s an apposite curtain-raiser for an album that can encompass pounding techno (Human Touch), elastic hipped robofunk (America’s Cup), tripped out motorik (Czech Locomotive) and acres more besides without even topping for breath.

Take lead single Pink Lunettes, which opens up thumping like ESG eight hours into a session at Berghain before climbing aboard a gargantuan synthship and disappearing off over the horizon. Lyrically, too, 9 takes Pond into uncharted territory.

Allbrook’s songs here take a more impressionistic tack than before, resulting in both the hilarious one-liners within Human Touch’s gonzoid thrash (sample lyric: “she was jacking a car but she seemed quite nice so I let her use the toilet in my place”) and the social and environmental concerns of blissed out closer Toast, which addressed both last year’s bush fires and the appalling wealth divide in Allbrook’s childhood home in Western Australia. Above all though, what you get from “9” is a sense of creative abandon and just plain fun. If it was only a fraction as enjoyable to make as it is to listen to then they must have been having a hoot.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. Song For Agnes
2. Human Touch
3. America’s Cup
4. Take Me Avalon I’m Young
5. Pink Lunettes
Side B:
1. Czech Locomotive
2. Rambo
3. Gold Cup / Plastic Sole
4. Toast
Side C:
1. Lights Of Leeming
2. My Funny Serpentine
3. The TAB Took My Baby Away
4. Hang A Cross On Me

Formed in 1991, the Philadelphia-based quintet have spent some thirty years mapping guitar music’s outer limits ­– dialing into extremes of noise, chaos, and harmony in free-form compositions that now unfurl across 12 full-length records and a near-limitless body of EPs, cassettes, and CD-Rs Recorded by the lineup of John Gibbons (guitar), Michael Gibbons (guitar), Isobel Sollenberger (voice, flute), Clint Takeda (bass), and Joe Culver (drums), Amanita is the place where the band’s spontaneous collective creativity blazed into maturity.

TRACK LISTING

Limerick
Sentence
Tantric Porno
Wank
The High Frequency
Sometimes Words
Yellow Turban
Rumination
Be A Fish
Tapir Song
RM
Clean Sweep
Brambles

In Pond’s universe nothing stays still for long. Although no one who heard 2019’s “Tasmania” could possibly describe its pulsating psych-pop as straight, Pond wanted to try a more spontaneous way of working for their next record.

Taking a leaf out of krautrock outliers Can’s book, at the start of 2020, Pond embarked on a series of totally off-the-cuff jam sessions from which songs and ideas could be pulled out.

Given the pace at which ideas whizz past your head, it makes for a dizzying listen. Opener Song For Agnes explodes out the speakers like an intergalactic rock opera, running a synapse-tingling gauntlet through bubbling synth pop, 80s hair metal and blissed out saxophone before you know what’s hit you.

It’s an apposite curtain-raiser for an album that can encompass pounding techno (Human Touch), elastic hipped robofunk (America’s Cup), tripped out motorik (Czech Locomotive) and acres more besides without even topping for breath.

Take lead single Pink Lunettes, which opens up thumping like ESG eight hours into a session at Berghain before climbing aboard a gargantuan synthship and disappearing off over the horizon.

Lyrically, too, 9 takes Pond into uncharted territory. Allbrook’s songs here take a more impressionistic tack than before, resulting in both the hilarious one-liners within Human Touch’s gonzoid thrash (sample lyric: “she was jacking a car but she seemed quite nice so I let her use the toilet in my place”) and the social and environmental concerns of blissed out closer Toast, which addressed both last year’s bush fires and the appalling wealth divide in Allbrook’s childhood home in Western Australia.

Above all though, what you get from “9” is a sense of creative abandon and just plain fun. If it was only a fraction as enjoyable to make as it is to listen to then they must have been having a hoot.

TRACK LISTING

1. Song For Anges
2. Human Touch
3. America’s Cup
4. Take Me Avalon I’m Young
5. Pink Lunettes
6. Czech Locomotive
7. Rambo
8. Gold Cup / Plastic Sole
9. Toast

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2021 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY JUNE 12TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 6PM ON THE SAME DAY (SATURDAY JUNE 12TH).

1000 only pressed on limited edition ORANGE Vinyl & DL card.

Super rare self-released recordings from 2000, from the Philadelphia psych rockers; a must-have insight into their long, strange trips. Collated from a limited run original CDr, remastered and double-dosed for maximum sound. A viral jam session remastered onto vinyl for the very first time.

"The missing link between John Cage's 4'33 and Merzbow's ultimate noise; a grinding cacophony tempered with motorik precision. Immerse yourself in the gloopily transcendental pleasures of the world's finest purveyors of psych-rock magnificence."The Quietus.

"Few contemporary bands understand psychedeliaís weird mix of weightlessness and heaviosity better than Bardo Pond." Uncut.

A deconstructed masterclass that concludes with the mystical rampage of Into Something Else, a ten-minute slice of sludge blues at its gnarliest. Bardo Pond are no ordinary band." Drowned In Sound.

TRACK LISTING

Side A. 1 Sit Sleep 2 Cymbals 3 Syn Dept.
Side B. 4 Before 5 Into Something Else

The sixth album by Bardo Pond, a critically revered space rock masterpiece, lovingly reissued on double purple vinyl for the first time since 2003.

TRACK LISTING

Jd
Every Man
Dom’s Lament
Walking Clouds
Test
Night Of Frog

Critical praise from Pitchfork, Clash, The Wire, Q Magazine and more upon release. New inverted LTD edition artwork. Fire re-issue Bardo Pond’s eponymous eighth studio album from 2010, their debut for Fire from way back when. A lysergic brain wrestler in which the Pennsylvanian drone outfit perfect their modal sound. Teasing the artistry of LaMonte Young and Terry Riley into a guitar shaped cauldron, the album’s compulsive reverbed guitar shapes slowly simmer behind Isobel Sollenberger’s esoteric vocals “Like hearing a tannoy at a station in the voice of Jesus.” The Quietus. A claustrophobic stuttering raga interlocks with their psychedelic leanings best exemplified on ‘Cracker Wrist’ which sounds like something that’s intentionally always just about to happen/and/or spin back in time. Featuring lengthy fully nurtured play offs between the quintet ‘Bardo Pond’ is a heady statement that’s like the most wholesome kind of vegan-friendly mushroom trips. Pitchfork reckons they’re “playing fuzzed out stoner dreams.” Vice’s musical brother Noisey likens them to “Fugazi On Acid.” Allmusic intervenes with: “These are epic, soaring psychedelic ambient power-drone rock noise melodies where partially buried, distant female vocals are laced throughout a roaring, murky/sludge guitar soundscape

TRACK LISTING

1 Just Once
2 Don’t Know About You
3 Sleeping
4 Undone
5 Cracker Wrist
6 The Stars Behind
7 Wayne’s Tune

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2019 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 13th ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON. IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 12.01AM SATURDAY APRIL 20th.

1000 only. Purple vinyl edition. First time on vinyl since initial press in 1995. ‘Big Laughing Jym’ follows 1994’s ‘Bufo Alvarius’ and between 1996’s ‘Amanita’, inducing tenebral states with their sludgy yet beguiling psychedelic rock. On “"Dispersion" and "Clearhead" whirlpools of bass, feedback-clogged flute, and John and Michael Gibbons' high-dosage, irradiated guitars, are definitive Pond.” (AllMusic). The record also includes ‘Hummingbird Mountain II (A Return Trip’) and ‘Dragonfly’. “Playing fuzzed out stuff of stoner dreams since the mid ‘90s.” Pitchfork // “Today they stand as an elder statesman at the epicentre of an international underground of psychedelic extremists” Sunday Times // “They’re still making jaw-droppingly visceral spine-tingling music” Shindig // Track List 1 - Dispersion 2 - Respite 3 - Clearhead 4 - Champ 5 - Soaked 6 - Hummingbird Mountain II 7 - BLJ

Avey Tare, aka Dave Portner of Animal Collective, announces the new album ‘Cows On Hourglass Pond’, which was recorded between January - March 2018 by Dave Portner at Laughing Gas in Asheville, NC on a Tascam 48 half-inch reelto-reel tape machine and mixed by Adam McDaniel and Dave Portner at Drop Of Sun Studios in Asheville, NC. The album follows the 2017 release of Avey Tare’s ‘Eucalyptus’ and 2018’s audiovisual album ‘Tangerine Reef’, a collaboration between Animal Collective and avant-garde coral macro- videographers Coral Morphologic.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Frenetic melodies and cavernous vocal reverb work their way around the slo-mo funk and psychedelic melodies, leading the listener on a stylistically varied and fascinating journey.

TRACK LISTING

What’s The Goodside?
Eyes On Eyes
Nostalgia In Lemonade
Saturdays (Again)
Chilly Blue
K.C. Yours
Our Little Chapter
Taken Boy
Remember Mayan
HORS_

Tasmania is the brand new album from the Australian psychedelic-rock adventurers Pond, a dejected meditation on planetary discord, machismo, shame, blame and responsibility, love, blood and empire, wrapped in luxurious, funky prog-pop.

Once again produced and mixed by Kevin Parker (Tame Impala) and Pond, Tasmania encourages us to celebrate the fruits of our planet, frolic in the ocean, kick up the dust, roll in the grass and enjoy the feeling of being in love - while we still can.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Progressive melodies, effervescent throbbing synths and loungey, shimmering sweeps work their way into your mind below the neon lit vocals and alternating progressive soundcapes. It's a beguiling and absorbing listen, littered with high points aplenty and a plethora of head--nodding grooved-out moments. Top stuff.

TRACK LISTING

Daisy
Sixteen Days
Tasmania
The Boys Are Killing Me 
Hand Mouth
Dancer
Goodnight P.C.C.
Burnt Out Star
SelenŽ
Shame
Doctor’s In

The self titled album Bardo Pond is the first new release from Philadelphia's psychedelic rock unit to be released on Fire.

'The first time I saw Bardo Pond, I was, as probably most people are when they first encounter this batch of beatific weirdos, horribly unprepared. To describe the experience as "psychedelic" is an understatement on the order of saying that whacking oneself in the nuts with a ball-peen hammer is "mildly irritating." Needless to say, priorities were rearranged, etc.

Fast-forward 15 yrs, and Bardo Pond have put out many LPs, most of them named after hallucinogens that make you throw up all night and see things - which was kind of them, I always thought. Let ya know what you were in for. All of this recorded output is pretty staggering to me, because, without exception, they seemed able to toss a lasso around some sort of ineffable hoodoo that felt like it was a million yrs old. If Carl Sagan would have 1.) smoked a little more weed and 2.) not croaked, I'm hoping he would have cut a BP track onto that gold LP that they put on the Voyager units. Would've been a way better representation of the best parts of the human spirit than Chuck Berry, I say.

Anyhoo. One night not long ago in the Bardo Compound in Philly, Michael says in a kinda offhanded way, "Hey man, you wanna hear this? ..." And there I was, being bathed in the songs you've got in yr grubby little mitts right now.

I was, once again, unprepared.

This cauldron is a bit of a different brew. It made total sense to me (as it will to you) when he later told me the name of the LP is just "Bardo Pond." Why? It's a distillation. Two decades of playing together have sandblasted away everything unessential and left us with what we have here. It was like no one else before them had ever gotten near the plagal cadence, not Lou Reed or the Stooges or 2,000 yrs of church music. They invented it all over again, independent of any of that, after gawd knows how many yrs of flailing away and burning themselves up.

I fucking love these songs. And while I hate writing almost as much as I hate third-degree burns, I have to say it is a joy to be able to tell you about this record. I feel like Neil Fucking Armstrong.

It took years for them to get here, but this record is the most goddamned beautiful thing they've ever done. Sorry for the superlatives. But really, the only thing left for them to do at this point is explode'. - Fire Records.

John Gibbons: Guitars
Michael Gibbons: Guitars
Isobel Sollenberger: Voice, flute
Clint Takeda: Bass, next-level comedy
Aaron Igler: Electronics
Jason Kourkounis: Drums

with
Jeremiah Misfeldt: Farfisa
Dan Baltzer: Harp

New album from the Australian psychedelic rock band, Pond.

“Pond, an Australian rock band, toppled the stateliness of Britpop anthems into psychedelic turbulence, melting down grandiose riffs or pushing them toward screaming tantrums.” – New York Times

“From sleazy rock excess, to introspective, cracked psychedelia and back again” – Fader

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Off-kilter rhythms, the heaviest distorted basses you're likely to hear and soaring vocal harmonies. Brilliantly danceable synth freak-outs complete with plate reverbed mile-long drum tails. Get it or regret it!

TRACK LISTING

30000 Megatons
Sweep Me Off My Feet
Paint Me Silver
Colder Than Ice
Edge Of The World Pt. 1
A/B
Zen Automaton
All I Want For Xmas (is A Tascam 388)
Edge Of The World Pt. 2
The Weather

There are no Peel sessions anymore - that tradition was buried in the pyramids with John Peel himself upon the great man's passing. Of the thousands left in the wake, six are ascribed to Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - and of those six, three have been combined to form the deeply congruous experience of Pond Scum.

A span of eight years is covered, in reverse, and many chestnuts are rolled out, freed of former contexts with sparse arrangements. "(I Was Drunk at the) Pulpit" feels, ten years from inception, more vividly worn; "Death to Everyone" is loosed from its frame, the bones decoupled and spread out, giving the song a re?ective air (as opposed the biting declamation of the original); "Arise, Therefore" adapts its metronomic base, the evangelic twist of its roots made palpable. With the centre of the performance in stark relief, the gnomic qualities of two "Get On Jolly" pieces are intensi?ed. Further accenting the devoted spirit of this collection is the inclusion of Bonnie's take on Prince's "The Cross", as well as the previously-unreleased original "Beezle."

Bonnie's lone shadow casts over this lot, accompanied on the ?rst four tracks by David Heumann, but otherwise playing solo through a set of original songs (and two covers) representing a decade of progress in the almost unbearably intimate-yet-unknowable manner that was so often the vibe of those strange and wondrous days.

Layers peel to reveal the subtle artistry and refinement contained within these sessions, so begin to dig deep into the vault on January 22nd, 2016! But wait, there's more! You can download a new arrangement of "Rich Wife Full of Happiness", (which is similar in tone, but not found on Pond Scum!)!

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2014 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

180 gram LP (part of a trilogy – complete on RSD 2015). Bardo Pond follow up last year’s RSD release ‘Rise Above It All’ with the second of a trilogy of RSD exclusive releases. Continuing their exploration and interpretation of existing tracks, this time they turn their attention to ‘Ride Into The Sun’ by the Velvet Underground and ‘Here Come The Warm Jets’ by Brian Eno. The results are astounding and in the case of ‘Here Come The Warm Jets’ wonderfully surprising, with Isobel’s voice embellishing a rendition of startling Bardo pop. Loosely formed in 1989 by guitar wielding art student siblings, Michael and John Gibbons, Bardo Pond became a reality in 1991 with the addition of vocalist and flautist, Isobel Sollenberger, bassist, Clint Takeda and drummer, Joe Culver (replaced in 1999 by trainee librarian, Ed Farnsworth). Bardo Pond are the flagship band of Philly's "Psychedelphia" space rock movement, which also included the likes of Aspera, Asteroid No. 4, the Azusa Plane, and tangentially the Lilys. They favour lengthy, deliberate sound explorations filled with all the hallmarks of modern-day space rock: droning guitars, thick distortion, feedback, reverb, and washes of white noise.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ride Into The Sun (The Velvet Underground)
2. Here Come The Warm Jets (Brian Eno)

This unlikely group of pond-life obsessives formed in the confines of a Bristolian industrial lift in 2002. The spawn of the Liftmen's newt-ridden nucleus begs inadequate comparison with the likes of Prag Vec, Tortoise, Thee Headcoatees and Young Marble Giants but sounds a little bit like none of the above.

Consisting of core members Rasha Shaheen, Neil Smith, Jamie Whitby-Coles and Jesse D Vernon, a fully formed The Liftmen first knocked on Twisted Nerve’s door in 2005, making their label debut on the pocket sized second-classtome ‘Now Is The Winter Of Our Discount Tents’ compilation, and have remained a firm fixture of the label's roster ever since.

‘Luftwaffe Pond’ sees The Liftmen step out of the shaft and into the light, presenting eleven new shapes in amphibious rock music.

‘Troubled Teens’ is a smart, scuttling intro about religious zealots trying to entice the vulnerable: there are echoes throughout of those fertile times when punk’s brusque energy found its way to more subtle timbres via bands like Gang Of Four, The Bush Tetras and Jozef K, while at points an almost jazzy serenity descends recalling the Chicago school of the nineties... yet just as often this is gleefully ruptured by fuzzedout motorik detours and Deerhoofian thrusts into sonic overdrive. It is those moments that are gloriously expanded upon in their blistering live shows, where they are often joined by fellow Bristolian SJ Esau on sundry electronic devices.

The eagerly anticipated follow up to their Twisted Nerve debut album ‘The Liftmen’.