Rhythms' is the debut album by Goatman, a new solo project by one of the mysterious members from the Swedish collective GOAT.

Recorded in GOAT’s northern Swedish home town of Korpilombolo In late 2017 - the 6 tracks on Rhythms reveal a true collision of African Rock, Jazz, Reggae, Gospel and Psych, but all put through the famous GOAT filters.
Rhythms is a very apt title for the album as each track is an exploration of the ‘groove’. From the Fela Kuti‘esqe drums and horns jam of Jaam Ak Salam, to the frantic gospel-jazz of Carry the Load. From the fuzzed Can via the ‘Bristol sound’ track of Hum Bebass Nahin, to the cinematic, Spacemen 3‘esqe drones of the album closer Baaneexu. The end result is quite an astonishing and very unique album, like what you would expect from an album made by a member of GOAT – an album that is hard to put your finger on, but one that you will keep revisiting, the more it’s sounds reveals itself.

Goatman plays all the instruments on the album bar some additional drums by Hanna Östergren from fellow Swedish bands Hills and Träd, Gräs & Stenar, and an added horn section courtesy of Johan Asplund, David Byström. One of the standout highlights of the album though is the collection of great guest vocalists Goatman has enlisted. Tracks Jaam Ak Salam and Aduna feature the very special voice of Senegalese singer Seydi Mandoza. You will also hear the vocals of Swedish based singers Amanda Werne on Carry the Load and Amerykhan on Hum Bebass Nahin. Goatman’s passion for traditional and contemporary music from around the world can be clearly heard when listening to Rhythms.

The level of authenticity and willingness for exploration that Goatman has captured truly shows a fanatical respect for the music he is greatly influenced by. But at the end of the day, Rhythms is an album that has a sole purpose, and that is for to you to enjoy, dance and have fun too! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Who doesn't want more Goat related music? Everything they've put out has been gold, and this side project by the MAN from GOAT (get it?) is no exception. Snappy percussion, rolling horns and fuzzed-out psychedelic soloing, pulsing grooves and richly hypnotic bass. If you liked Goat, there's no way you won't like this.

TRACK LISTING

01 Jaam Ak Salam
02 Hum Bebass Nahin
03 Limelight
04 Carry The Load
05 Aduna
06 Baaneexu

Traversing the everyday in 2023,the need for ritual catharsis only grows stronger. The need to lose oneself in a force bigger than ourselves, and to venture into innerspace the better to sculpt armour for the battles outside. Luckily this is the job of Bonnacons of Doom, aural soothsayers and progenitors of Trans Pennine hypnotic music.

‘Signs’-their second album for Rocket Recordings-marks both a portent of things to come, and a roadmap of the psychic pathways to survival. This masked troupe, subsumed to mystery and amassed from across the North of England, have stepped up their mission accordingly. Building on the intimidating intensity of theirself-titled2018 debut, this series of fiercely charged mantras and premonitory transmissions is possessed of a new level of communal intensity. The band’s choice of weapons-the monomaniacal intensity of the riff, the liberating binary spirit of electronics and the incantatory vocals of ceremonial leader Kate Smith-here coalesce into a metaphysical force which stands defiant of easy categorisation. Within these otherworldly manifestations lurks solace in a place where the transcendent power of heavy amplification, cosmically aligned sonic explorations and strange forces darker and more unknowable can coalesce to cathartic and redeeming effect.

‘Signs’ marks out a supernatural landscape where ancient and modern, earthly and alien congregate in the eternal now, whilst Bonnacons of Doom transcend era to light a path for the future.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Facing
2. Esus
3. Infra
4. Limina
Side B
5. Shore
6. Signs
7. Lichen
8. Semaphore

It is hard to know how many times the mythology and mystery of Goat’s backstory can be written about, but new release ‘Medicine’ does away with any need to dwell on the past, returning with a more introspective, slightly mellower psych-folk sound that remains recognisably them.

There is a consistently restrained, warm feel across the whole work, and the band suggest that the overall theme of the album is about “the impermanence of life in different ways: sickness, relationships, love, death and how our time is finite”.

At times the album’s sound has nods to classic Swedish 70s psych/prog/folk acts such as Arbete & Fritid, Charlie & Esdor and Träd, Gräs & Stenar. ‘Vakna’ takes on this influence, progressing across nearly six minutes of swaying, warping guitar solos, without ever breaking out into chaos.

The ‘Medicine’ of the title may refer to a number of salves, or the value of relationships and love: “For our families, friends, society, this could be done through the use of psychedelics, through meditation, through learning from other people, staying curious and never settling for a ‘solid’ identity”.

Flute is foregrounded throughout, threading across several tracks from the opener ‘Impermanence And Death’. It duets elegantly with keening synth lines through the beautiful ‘You’ll Be Alright’, and leads the melody of the closing track ‘Tripping In The Graveyard’. ‘TSOD’, with its backdrop of sitar and acoustic guitar, has an indelible vocal melody that could be a lost George Harrison recording.

The title of the full album version of first single, ‘I Became The Unemployment Office’, comes from an expression for someone taking advantage of you. The joyous, echo-laden groove of penultimate track ‘Join The Resistance’ bursts into life and continues to build to a moment of release with a huge Sabbath-esque riff.

Whatever your dosage, and regardless of your remedy, it is now time to take your medicine.

TRACK LISTING

01. Impermanence & Death
02. Raised By Hills
03. I Became The Unemployment Office
04. Tsod
05. Vakna
06. You’ll Be Alright
07. Join The Resistance
08. Tripping In The Graveyard

In Frank Herbert’s 1973 novel Hellstrom’s Hive, the Dune writer tells of a sinister narrative surrounding the maverick scientist Nils Hellstrom, who has created a meticulously constructed Hive underneath his Oregon farmhouse. Therein, he oversees a subterranean order of 50,000 insect-human hybrid life-forms. Ultimately his plan being for the inhabitants of the Hive to usurp humanity and take over the world.

The decade thus far may not have seen anything quite so daunting, but it’s provided more than its fair share of challenges. Yet in such dystopian environments, Teeth Of The Sea flourish. This band has created a kaleidoscopic inner world all its own in Hive, their sixth and most outlandish album.

Fundamental to Teeth Of The Sea’s mission thus far is that this band can go anywhere and make short work of any obstacles in their path. Unfettered by genre distinctions or expectations, the only limits of this trio - comprising Sam Barton, Mike Bourne and Jimmy Martin - are those of its imagination. It therefore follows that inspiration flowed into Hive from all dimensions, with the band’s sphere of influence - the science fiction, trash culture and cinematic atmospherics by which they’ve fuelled their mission thus far - expanding to take in everything from Italo-disco to minimal techno, from dubbed-out studio madness to their most brazen forays thus far into pop songwriting. Here is a headspace where the psychic charges from records by Labradford, Nurse With Wound, Vangelis, The Knife, Nine Inch Nails and John Barry can happily co-exist.

These disparate pathways cohere and coalesce to create a vivid experience rich with emotion and intrigue. A commission to create a live soundtrack at London’s Science Museum for a documentary on the Apollo Moon Landings gave flight to the trilogy of tracks - Artemis, Æther and Apollo which are summarily imbued with the dreamlike wonder and existential peril of the mission itself. A collaboration with vocalist Kath Gifford (Snowpony, The Wargs, Sleazy Tiger) set loose Butterfly House, which transmutes synthpop stylings into something uniquely radiant, haunting and melancholic. Get With The Program - sung by Mike Bourne - is meanwhile no less than a noise-fuelled, speaker-shaking electro-industrial banger.

Megafragma, meanwhile, is the most experimental track this band has yet created, a collaboration with engineer and co-conspirator Giles Barrett that morphs form and structure in search of new epiphanies - ‘Simple Headphone Mind’ and Roxy Music’s ‘The Bogus Man’ may have formed some of the cues for this nine-minute avant-epic but its trajectory was one the band were happy to submit to external forces.

Hive is more than just a transformative force from subterranean origins. It’s an alchemical headspace where monochrome animates into vivid colour. It may not be a carefully ordered insectoid militia set to overthrow society, but it’s a transmission which transcends anything Teeth Of The Sea have thus far offered in their time on Earth.

Step inside Hive, if you dare.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1: Artemis
2: Get With The Program
3: Butterfly House
4: Liminal Kin
5: Æther
Side B
1: Megafragma
2: Powerhorse
3: Apollo

Seven is the magic number. Indeed, not only do psychologists theorise that the human brain can only memorise a sequence of this length, but Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - the Newcastle-based maximalists whose riffs, raw power and rancour have blazed a trail across the darker quarters of the underground in the last five years - have made a second album in King Of Cowards which does its damnedest to take consciousness to its very limits. Moreover, another notable seven is dealt with here - that of the deadly sins. As vocalist and synth player Matt Baty notes “For a long time I’ve questioned how and where guilt can be used as a form of oppression. When can guilt be converted into positive action?

After typing all of the lyrics up I realised I’d unwittingly referenced every one of the seven deadly sins throughout the album. That’s my fire and brimstone Catholic upbringing coming into play there!” Building on the momentum this band has built since their January 2017 debut Feed The Rats, this opus sees them entering a new phase as a sleeker and still more dangerous swineherd. The Iggy-esque drive to dementia, Sabbath-esque squalor and Motörhead-style dirt may still be present and correct, yet the songs are leaner, the long-drawn-out riff-fests sharpened into addictive hammerblows and the nihilistic dirges of yore alchemically transformed into an uplifting and inviting barrage of hedonistic abandon.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which” So George Orwell noted at the end of a certain slim volume. King Of Cowards is nothing less than just such a metamorphosis, one in which - in a blur of primal urges and beastly physicality - this band shows us just which animals are really in charge of the farm. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I could imagine that this is seven pigs, if and only if pigs were capable of sporting a guitar / bass / duo of drumsticks and using them to smash out an epic conceptual behemoth centred around the seven sins and sounding like a metal freight train smashing into a mountain at full speed. I've not heard of that being the case, so I can only assume these are super-human musical beings and not their fleshy porcine counterparts.

TRACK LISTING

1. GNT
2. Shockmaster
3. A66
4. Thumbsucker
5. Cake Of Light 
6. Gloamer

Moundabout’s glorious second long player is named after Cnoc Mór na nGaibhlte (or The Big Hill Of The Galtees) an imposing sandstone and shale peak in Munster, from which vantage point the horizon retreats to impossible-seeming distances. Paddy Shine, of psychedelic powerhouse GNOD, and Phil Masterson, of cult groups Los Langeros, Damp Howl and Bisect, chose this as base camp for their latest expedition into a new form of psychedelic Irish folk music.

Getting lost in liminal zones, at thresholds, where boundaries merge is key to the Moundabout sound. The Galtees is an Irish mountain range where the counties Tipperary, Cork and Limerick amalgamate, Shine adds: “We seem to have found ourselves recording and finishing albums in places where the boundaries have become blurry.”

The set up of Shine on acoustic guitar, Masterson on electric guitar, both on vocals and sparse electronic accompaniment from antique Hammond drum machine Shine found in his auntie’s attic and old analogue synth, plus field recordings, remains the same as their debut but this time the pair push further out on tracks such as ‘Step In Out Of That’ which calls to mind Egypt-based free psych trio The Dwarfs Of East Agouza and reaches its apogee on the glorious, sunburst of New Weird Éirana ‘Instinct, Eye And Mind’ which treads in the footsteps of Michael Chapman at his most ragged and echoes the borderless fourth world guitar peregrinations of Mike Cooper. If the voyage that Flowers Rot took us on was one out of modernity into a vibrant megalithic antiquity, it feels like An Cnoc Mór is taking us even further back.

Masterson says: “These hills were hills long before homo sapiens set foot on them, gave them names and stories and insulted them with egotistic concepts such as ‘conquering them’.” The pair agree that getting out into the environment is an essential ingredient in the Moundabout process. Moundabout has always been about getting out in the surroundings, hiking, swimming, chatting and experimenting with certain substances. An Cnoc Mór was recorded with all those influences… just minus the substances.” Sun, snow, hail and wind, there was no choice but just to be out in it & be inspired.

“Enjoy Moundabout’s strange argot, let it wash over you like the tide.” Album of the Week / The Quietus.

“A deep sense of devotional wonder.” Electronic Sound.

“A musical contemplation of the megalithic.” Terrascope.

“A lesson in neolithic ritual and otherworldly transcendence.” Louder Than War.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A beautiful, hypnotic suite of brittle folky ballads veiled with ambient drone and woozy psychedelic haze. Reminiscent of the glum slo-mo Americana of Molasses or some of the more ambient Alien8 records. A beautiful immersive selection from two of the finest voices in the alternative music world. Stunner.

TRACK LISTING

01. The Hills Hum Hymns
02. Step In Out Of That
03. Sacred & Profane
04. Living To Give
05. Instinct, Eye And Mind
06. The Torrent

The second album by underground rock-and-beyond shapeshifters The Holy Family comes complete with a heavy concept for the psychedelically inclined, and pairs this with music which does this justice and then some. ‘Go Zero’ follows up the British group’s widely praised self-titled debut from 2021 and – says foundational member David Jason Smith – “is based on a hypothetical theory that there is no such thing as ‘the future’. We are continually moving forward into our past until we arrive at our birth – creation – the Tree Of Knowledge… or ‘Going Zero’, as I’ve termed it.” It figures, then, that over some 40 minutes the five musicians conjure a sound that exhibits an affinity with great experimental totems down the ages, in a manner that’s avowedly forward-facing and stamped with their own identity. All involved boast a pre-Holy Family CV to turn clued-in heads: Kavus Torabi (guitars), Sam Warren (bass) and Emmett Elvin (piano and Rhodes), along with Smith himself, were all members of the mighty Guapo. Finnish studio wizard Antti Uusimaki (Circle/Pharaoh Overlord etc), who co-sculpted the eight tracks on ‘Go Zero’ into their final form. Drummer Joe Lazarus is new to the band – taking over that role from Smith, who largely concentrates on vocals and synths here – and his versatility is never in doubt, as his rhythms pull in myriad directions, blurring the lines between jazz, prog and psych rock. If you dig anything from Can to Boredoms to Oneida, then step this way. Though The Holy Family’s musical inspirations are multitudinous, and rarely if ever obvious, the lyrics nod to a distinct literary source – namely ‘Vorrh’, the trilogy of fantasy novels by cult British author Brian Catling, who died in 2022 while ‘Go Zero’ was being assembled. In these books, the Vorrh is “an impenetrable sentient forest, older than mankind, believed to house all knowledge” – and in the same way that the name The Holy Family references an Angela Carter work, Smith explains, “the track titles ‘Chalky’s Eyes’ (had been eaten by flies) and ‘The Watcher’ are direct references to characters in the book.” With ‘Go Zero’, The Holy Family have returned with an album that unfurls elegantly, even while big time discombobulation is occurring.

TRACK LISTING

1. Crawling Out
2. Bad Travelling
3. Chalky’s Eyes
4. The Watcher
5. Hell Born Babel
6. Go Zero Suite: Pt. I
7. Go Zero Suite: Pt. II
8. Go Zero Suite: Pt. III 

Swedish band GOAT annihilated the usual expectations surrounding ‘the difficult second album’ with the bigger and bolder cosmos of Commune. Ricocheting off the unanimous acclaim of their debut LP World Music - to say nothing of their earned star reputation for putting on a killer live show - the Korpilombolo bunch double down on their fuzzed out riffs and modern ritualist practices. Opener ‘Talk to God’ begins with precisely this sense of holy ceremony, as singing bowls chime in reverent reception of whip-smart highlife licks and a thunderous drum-bass dialogue.

‘Goatchild’ and ‘Goatslaves’ sees paces and heart-rates quicken in the tumult of percussive hypnotism and fuzz-wah punctuations with extra-dimensional force. As if an amplification of their sonic fervour wasn’t enough, Commune finds GOAT widening their scope to greet the universe with open arms, contradiction and all - life and death, dark and light - as we’re told on ‘To Travel the Path Unknown’: “there is only one true meaning with life / and that is to be a positive force in the constant creation of evolution”. GOAT send their message of oneness home with blistering closer ‘Gathering of Ancient Tribes’, a riotous six-plus minute fireball which ends where Commune began with the same singing bowl chimes, forming the run-time of the LP into a perfect circle. 

This ltd edition 2023 vinyl reissue of GOAT's Commune returns the album to its original Gold sleeve and is pressed on a luscious Green/Blue Swirl vinyl.

When the mysterious masked collective calling themselves Goat first emerged in 2012, armed with an incendiary debut album ‘World Music’ and a backstory for the ages – the band’s anonymous members hailing from the remote village of Korpilombo in northern Sweden, where inhabitants had for centuries been devoted to a form of voodoo introduced by a travelling witch doctor – there was, and there still isn’t, anyone else on earth quite like them. Their mythology enticing, their music full of sinuous grooves and manic explosions of fuzz, Goat were outliers from the very beginning.

‘World Music’ received an avalanche of acclaim with critics, psych heads, outernational crate diggers etc, all left enraptured by its thunderous intensity, conjured from a singular mix of sounds from across the globe.Now, exactly a decade later, Rocket Recordings and the band have decided to dust-off the original recordings of ‘World Music’ and pass them over to the capable hands of the team at the legendary Abbey Road Studios to remaster the tracks and make them shine like they have never before.

The results are better than we could have hoped. New details within the tracks have been revealed and - most importantly - the fuzz is even more explosive than before. You hear every crackle of electricity as it flows through the pedals. ‘World Music’ s famous die-cut sleeve has been updated too, the colours of the eye-popping pattern have been reversed from the original, making this package even more desirable. The album is brimming with tracks now seen as ‘classic’ Goat live favourites. Tracks that have been wowing audiences all over the world; the afrobeat stomp of ‘Disco Fever’ , the fuzz abuse of ‘Goathead’, the post-punk groove of ‘Let it Bleed’, the sing-along repetitive pop of ‘Run to your Mama’ ...From the first note to the last, ‘World Music’ oozes with a sonic confidence rarely seen on a debut album.

Over the last 10 years many bands have tried to recreate the addictive ingredients which make up Goat ’s cosmic soup, but none have ever come close to getting the recipe right. What Goat have is unique. They have an unsurpassed level of authenticity and honesty that makes them stand head and shoulders above all their imitators. They’ve managed to create a sound unrestrained by genre boundaries. There literally is still no other band on earth that sounds quite like them

Let’s face facts here; we’re all a mess. Life in the 2020s thus far has been a litany of crushing indignities at best. Living standards plummet, lies carry the same currency as truth, and rock music - that racket that once served as countercultural force and revolutionary fire - has been neutered and subsumed into nullity.That’s unless you’re listening to The Shits. ‘You’re A Mess’ - the second album from Leeds’ filthiest sons - is a staggering assault of invective fit to reignite your ire, and a sound that constitutes a real and present threat to life and limb. Contained within these eight feral exorcisms is a merciless assault of Stoogian/stygian riffage, gloriously purgatorial abjection and intimidating aggro that takes a garage-rock blueprint and grinds its face in the dirt.If these grimy dirges and salvos of horror have a precedent, it’s in the menacing audial lineage that connects Fun House through the AmRep label, Brainbombs and

Drunk In Hell - the process where relentless negativity is alchemically transformed into profane primal salvation. Yet The Shits worship no heroes, obeying a thanatotic urge that sees no separation between death and glory.Listen to this album and you will believe once again in catharsis by way of heavy amplification. Psych-rock is dead, and The Shits are the executioners. Assume the position.

TRACK LISTING

01. In My Hotel Room
02. Waiting
03. You’re A Mess
04. The Venus (After Hours)
05. Bludgeoned To Death
06. Alone Ii
07. Ugly, Worthless
08. I Regret Nothing (Parts 1 & 2)

Transcendence through repetition beamed via an aesthetic vision steeped in mystery: welcome to the world of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne’s Smote, an entity opening up uncanny new psychic pathways. ‘Genog’ - the outfit’s second release on Rocket Recordings following 2021’s eerie transmission ‘Drommon’ - shows that Smote’s elliptical casting of bleak magick is only growing more powerful as it gathers momentum. The brainchild of Daniel Foggin, Smote has evolved seemingly of its own volition. ”I had the idea for years” he relates, “I love Pärson Sound, Träd, Gräs Och Stenar, Traditional Irish Folk and all sorts of different Drone and Folk music. It was simply finding the opportunity to sit down and get recording. A very heavy influence that affects Smote is fantasy as a genre, and the atmosphere that can be created via story-telling. ”The musical approach of Smote may have started out as a resolutely DIY one, yet from the humble origins of bedroom and rehearsal room recordings, the band has now become a full-fledged and powerful live band, whose appearances at festivals like Roadburn, Le Guess Who and Brave Exhibitions have already caused a considerable stir. The five vivid extrapolations on Genog conjure differing spiritual realms, yet combine and coalesce to offer one unified vision, building furious momentum in a manner that unites the pastoral with the arcane and otherworldy. Earthy, ritualistic and richly cinematic in aspect, Genog is an avatar guiding the listener to dark and beguiling imaginary landscapes

As musicians across the world have watched the last decade systematically eating away at the infrastructure by which they pursue their art, triumphs against adversity have sometimes entered the realm of cliche .Yet few bands have undergone quite the travails that Perm, Russia’s Gnoomes have on the road to the release of their fourth release on Rocket Recordings, Ax Ox. From such traumatic circumstances, with the band having overcome the stress of a pandemic, illness, depression and serious turmoil in their home country, have arrived a kaleidoscopic and questing vision shot through with potent melancholia and strident optimism. Here the component parts that have always made up Gnoomes’ fresh and wide-eyed aesthetic - dreampop radiance, bold electronic experimentation and the propulsive motorik drive which moves them onward - are rendered still more vivid and transcendent. Ax Ox runs through a gamut of vibrant emotion across its eleven tracks, from the elemental blast of kraut-pop that is ‘The Neighbour’ to the crystalline and techno-fied ‘Loops’, and across moments of jarring and skewed ambience such as ‘Mirror’ and ‘The Bridge’.

The album also chronicles a fractious relationship which the band have with their home countrry. Gnoomes’ Sasha Painkov and his wife Masha Piankova have both been forced to leave the country when mobilisation was announced in pursuit of safety. However, as Sasha relates. “In our opinion this album could be a psychedelic musical about growing up and living in the post Soviet Russia. If you watched (Adam Curtis’ documentary series) Traumazone, it’s not complicated really to imagine the visual part of the musical!” Ax Ox ultimately reflects something of an odyssey for a complex and inhospitable modern era, and with this in mind perhaps its centrepiece is the uplifting kosmische travelogue ‘Eternal Trans Siberian’ “It’s a metaphor of what’s going on to our country” reckons Sasha. “It feels like we’re traveling on a rusty and wrecked train through space and time. The epochs change, but the problems stay the same and we don’t knowhow it’s possible, but the train is still moving”.

TRACK LISTING

01. Ural Sun
02. Ax Ox
03. The Neighbor
04. Mirror
05. Loops
06. Les Funérailles
07. Eternal Trans Siberian
08. Bristoled
09. The Bridge
10. Salted Caramel
11. NST

Whether inhabiting the realm of dreams or nightmares, the primordial drive of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs is more powerful than ever and ‘Land Of Sleeper’, their fifth record in a decade of rancour and revelation is testimony to this. Arguably the most potent and assured record of their storied life so far, it’s the product of a band energised and fortified by their individual passions to incendiary effect. After the travails of the two and a half years since 2020’s ‘Viscerals’, ‘Land Of Sleeper’ sees the Newcastle-based quintet not so much reinvigorated as channelling a furious drive which only appears to gather momentum as the band’s surroundings spins on their axis.

For all that the last few years have seen Pigs’ stature rise in the wake of triumphant festival slots and sold-out venues like, this remains a band fundamentally incapable of tailoring their sound to a prospective audience, rather standing alone and impervious as a monument of catharsis.“Certainly for me, writing and playing music is often surprising and revealing, it can be like holding up a mirror and seeing things you didn’t expect to see” reckons drummer Ewan Mackenzie, whose return to the Pigs fray after two albums away marked another big influence on the new record. “For me, the darker tracks on the record hold in common a determination not to lose faith, despite the odds”

The better to unite slumber and waking, ‘Land Of Sleeper’ is no less than an act of transcendence for Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - new anthems to elucidate a world sleepwalking to oblivion.

'Land Of Sleeper come housed in eye-popping 'Callum Rooney' sleeve art with obi strip and 'Oz' style lyrics poster.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The unstoppable Pigs x7 return for a more expansive blast of their gritty sludge-rock, swimming with groove but edging into darker climes. It's a confident and psychedelic blast from one of the greatest bunch of noise merchants in the game.

TRACK LISTING

01. Ultimate Hammer
02. Terror's Pillow
03. Big Rig
04. The Weatherman
05. Mr Medicine
06. Pipe Down!
07. Atlas Stone
08. Ball Lightning 

Every single psychonaut worth their salt can remember a moment, midway through some chemically-assisted voyage into the unknown, when someone in the room had the sheer gall to utter the immortal words that strike terror into the heart of everyone present: “Hey, imagine what it’d be like if we stayed this way forever?” Wonder no longer. Existing permanently stranded at the dizzying peak of a nightmarish hallucinatory travelogue, Shit & Shine are here to make that moment a reality. Yet thankfully, as always in this absurdist and electrifying realm, they’re notable for offering a different vision from the third eye whenever they make themselves manifest. What’s more, with New Confusion they’ve usurped their own outré paradigms yet again, resulting in a demented heat-haze panorama of delirious beat-driven abandon and elucidated neural pathways.

As ever the brainchild of Texan king of outlaw brinkmanship Craig Clouse, these nine abject and glorious meditations exist in an alternate dimension whereby a loop-driven exploratory framework is joyridden with alacrity offroad by a moonshine-swigging convict, a zone whereby aural scrap metal is alchemically transformed into gleaming, abstract and intimidating structures and sculptures anew. It may not have occurred to the average head that the sound of Tropicália melting gleefully in the sun (as here essayed on ‘Miami’) might be to their satisfaction, nor that the image of J Dilla trapped in a K-hole with Butthole Surfers would do anything but make them mildly anxious. Similarly, the prospect of Ming The Merciless screaming with rage at his internet service provider (see ‘Robbed’) may not be something that immediately appeals to music listeners around the globe, and nor could most folk imagine an in-the-red floor-filler being quite as pulverising and irresistible as the motorik mangler ‘Annoyed’, which kicks off this album in incendiary style - no less than the sound of ‘Hallogallo’-in-hell. Yet if the parallel universe of Shit & Shine exists for anything, it’s to map out new frontiers of wrong and righteous beyond your wildest expectations. Meet the new end-of-level boss. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Annoyed
2. Cocoa Leaves
3. Miami
4. Shipped
5. Runnin Around
6. Park Road 1-C
7. Riviera
8. Steak Butter
9. Robbed

Some of the most striking ancient structures in Ireland are not its standing stones but the country’s neolithic “passage tombs” constructed between five and six thousand years ago. As this modern name suggests, they were in all likelihood actual liminal zones bridging this world and the next; charnel houses, stone age reliquaries, bone gardens, cairns vibrating between planes and states of being. One of the most interesting of these graves is Knowth at Brú na Bóinne. Its huge, many-passaged central burial chamber is surrounded by 17 small barrows, and among these constructions is over one third of all the rediscovered megalithic art in Western Europe. Kerbstones and pillars are carved with a hypnotising array of spiral, serpentiform and lozenge-shaped patterns; alongside is chiselled the oldest known representation of the moon made by man.

Moundabout is the new folk project of Paddy Shine of GNOD, recorded with Phil Masterson in Ireland, but the words ‘new’ and ‘folk’ need to be treated with care here. Listening to Flowers Rot, Bring Me Stonesis like entering a trance state while staring at one of the Knowth spiral carvings. Like following a ridged epidermal loop inwards, tracing the spiral of an ammonite towards the centre or peeling back the layers of an onion, immersion in this great album sees you travelling both temporally backwards and spatially inwards simultaneously. The listener is invited to see folk – orally transmitted music often concerning national identity and culture played on traditional instruments – as a glowing helix of a continuum stretching way back beyond the revival of the 1950s and 1960s to an eternal vibrancy that predates classical antiquity and Irish civilisation itself.

As the album moves the listener, they are taken on a geographical and geological journey as well as psychological and spiritual, traveling inwards from the coast (‘The Sea’), as well as down beneath the strata (“How many bog bodies are waiting to be found?”) And when you have been primed, they take you all the way back to commune with older gods on the album’s epic centrepiece, ‘Dick Dalys Dance’, creating the kind of prehistoric drones and trance-inducing rhythms that the echoing, celestially aligned corridors of the Brú na Bóinne were built to amplify. This is not new music but the deep sensations it provokes will be new to most listeners. Imagine for a few minutes something as glorious as a Nurse With Wound List for the 21st Century… were I given such a formidable task as to organise such a collection of mind-bending music, Flowers Rot, Bring Me Stones by Moundabout would be one of the first records I would include.
John Doran, Wiltshire, 2021

TRACK LISTING

01. The Sea
02. Bog Bodies
03. Waste Of Peace
04. Lonely
05. Bring My Stones
06. Dick Dalys Dance
07. Cold River

Call it synchronicity, call it happenstance, call it no more than three friends getting together to give their speakers a workout. Yet The Utopia Strong’s formidable conflagration of psychedelic radiance and beatific harmony has evolved way beyond all or any expectations since the band’s inception.. ‘International Treasure’ chronicles the collaborative collision of Steve Davis, Kavus Torabi and Mike York heading into unchartered psychic territory, seemingly with nothing but their instincts as co-ordinates.What’s resulted is a step beyond anything either band or audience might have expected - a deeply rewarding voyage into inner space which moves into darker and still more evocative sound-worlds whilst remaining fundamentally off the map. Influences know no bounds in this context, and the listener would be forgiven for locating the atmospheres and soundscapes of this album on some sonic promontory above and between the potent abstractions of Tim Hecker, the improvisatory excursions of The Necks, and the gothic allure of Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore.‘International Treasure’’ is the next chapter in a story which only grows more rewarding with every stop along the way - one in which three heads travel together deeper into their own musical journeys, and the resulting alchemical power transmutes its origins into gold. As no less a sage than Andrew Weatherall proclaimed, The Utopia Strong are “gnostic sonics in a nutshell”.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The frankly astounding Utopia Strong return for another LP of lysergic synthlines and dreamy psychedelic electronica. It's full of hefty grooves and sonic waves, but never overwhelmingly heavy, opting instead for a perfectly balanced and wonderfully produced audio expedition. Lovely.

TRACK LISTING

01 - Trident Of Fire
02 - Persephone Sleeps
03 - Shepherdess
04 - Spirits From The Deep
05 - The Islanders
06 - Disaster 2
07 - Revelations
08 - International Treasure
09 - Castalia 

Lorena Quintanilla’s journey as J. Zunz continues with her third solo release, and her second for Rocket Recordings after 2020’s ‘Hibiscus’. Recorded in a vociferously windy area of Enseneda, Mexico, where Lorena spent a strict lockdown, Del Aire’ exorcises the troubles she encountered during the period, in the process creating both what she describes as a “continuity and discontinuity” from ‘Hibiscus’, and extracting a similar, yet fresh strain of emotional complexity.With the atmospheric and natural theme of air at the heart of the creative process, Lorena has created an extraordinarily spacious work. The synths of ‘Lineal’ thrive on pulse-like repetition, gathering from a luscious sweeping panorama into a bruising orchestral crescendo.

Elsewhere, as on ‘Del Aire’ the discordant-meets-melodic sonics dwell somewhere adjacent to Gazelle Twin. Both Lorena’s vocals and her distinctive crystalline avant aesthetic are writ large throughout the reverberations of ‘Cruce’ and ‘Horizonte’ as well as on the anxiety-rending exhortations closing the surreally meditative ‘Outsides’.‘Parts’ beautifully reflects organic instrumentation through Lorena’s electronic prism. ‘Raìfaga’, meanwhile, sees caustic drums enact glitchy, stop-start rhythms. Here, and on the hypnotic ‘Nina’, Lorena gilds the narcotic power of Miles Davis’s ‘On The Corner’ – with trumpet recorded by Freddie Murphy (Father Murphy) – into electronically contorted shapes. Through the mellifluous repetition, the cathartic buzzsaw moments and the elemental force of the album’s conceptual core, ‘Del Aire’ acts as an intimate echo chamber vicariously healing the listener’s wounds besides Lorena’s own.

TRACK LISTING

1. Cruce
2. Lineal
3. Ráfaga
4. Outsides
5. Nina
6. Horizonte 

Inspiration can strike anyone at any time, and more often than not from somewhat peculiar quarters. Rarely more so than when Sam Grant - thus far best known as guitarist and producer of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - finally set about work on a solo project that had been pursuing him for some years. “I want people to imagine that feeling of rubber - its physical memory, the unnatural vibe of it. It’s so tactile but alien. It’s an odd analogy, but that’s what this music is for me.”

A specific gravity is one more property that rubber has going for it, and that much is certainly true of Rubber Oh’s debut album ‘Strange Craft’, the result of his elasticated fixation, and his debut album of deliriously tuneful sci-fi tinged psychpop. It’s a unique soundworld in which an emphasis on beguiling melody marries a kaleidoscopic grandeur. Widescreen gems like the warped interstellar voyage that is Children Of Alchemy and the unshakeable earworm Hyperdrive Fantasyare all vibrant colour and celestial energy, setting their psychic stall out somewhere between the incandescent headspace of a ‘70s sci-fi TV show and the red-light-fever of the overheated ampstacks Grant has been historically more familiar with.

Ultimately, for Grant as well as everyone else, Rubber Oh amounts to one strange trip - “Many of the lyrics are about alchemy, journeying and vessels, as interchangeable metaphors for knowledge and wisdom” he says. “I wanted to mesh the land and sea, the cosmos and the psyche across the tracks as one single plane” Mission accomplished, in short. This Strange Craft is fuelled up and ready to accept all comers on a ride into extensions through dimensions

TRACK LISTING

01. Humans
02. Dust
03. Children Of Alchemy
04. Little Demon
05. Colour Orbit
06. Hyperdrive Fantasy
07. Arcade
08. To Be The Mariner
09. Nothing
10. You'll Feel Better In The Morning

Birthed in the bohemian enclave and epicentre of strange vibrations that is Calderdale in West Yorkshire, Hexen Valley’s story began in summer 2021 when a new formation of Gnod came together in a co-op house at the 200-year-old Nutclough Tavern. As always, the line-up of the collective shifted and morphed to fit circumstances, and soon they embarked on intensive jamming that was eventually captured by Sam Greenwood in Hebden Bridge Underground studios.

Inspiration struck not only from the chemistry of the four musicians in this confined room but all around - the band’s Paddy Shine cites the likes of shop noticeboard messages and pub conversations in Hebden as lyrical sparks; channeling by his reckoning the ‘valley fever’ that exists somewhere in the chasms and contrasts between the amazing light and vivacity of the valley summit and the comparative darkness of the towns below.

Meanwhile, musical shapes were making themselves known seemingly of their own volition, from ‘Still Running’, which takes shape across a sonic hinterland between Daydream Nation-style kineticism and sludged-out aggression to ‘Bad Apple’ - an entirely spontaneous piece of potent and angular post-punk intensity. Perhaps most surprisingly of all, Lou Reed’s tour-bus favourite ‘Waves Of Fear’ is hammered out with fearsome gusto into a salvo of first-take catharsis and alchemy, fit to transcend all or any oppressive atmospheres that surround.Hexen Valley is the sound of a band whose fearsome intensity is only matched by their evolutionary drive.

It’s Gnod at full power, and it’s a haunted place you might struggle to leave

TRACK LISTING

1. Bad Apple
2. Spotlight
3. Skies Are Red
4. Antidepressants
5. Still Runnin’
6. Waves Of Fear

Straight from the fertile imagination of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs guitarist Sam Grant comes Rubber Oh - a place where an irreverent magpie spirit has its way with the eternal psych-pop continuum. ‘Little Demon’ is the first sample of this fresh foray - a bass-driven, blissed out mantra that sets out its stall where the travails of the everyday fade into the transcendental realm of the astral plane. A whole new box of sonic delights from a curious and artful talent, this track maps out a refreshing new landscape on which shameless melodic suss and wayward aural eccentricity lock horns. Some may be reminded of the likes of Air’s ‘10000Hz Legend’ and Super Furry Animals ‘Radiator’ by the montage of 60s-tinged mind-melt and sleek futurism here, but the truth is that Rubber Oh is a manifestation of a very personal vision. Alchemically assembled in his own Blank studios in Newcastle, ‘Little Demon’ - in all its thundering, earcandy glory, and accompanied by a Faustian, abstraction-embracing remix by friends and cohorts Richard Dawson and Circle’s Jussi Lehtisalo - is merely a first step into the unknown. “It’s a reference to when you’re lying in bed and your thoughts sabotage you” reasons Grant of ‘Little Demon’ - “It’s all meant to be this fixed loop - the lyrics, the riff, the drums - a constant repetition that keeps going round, maybe like a fever dream. The little demons that when you’re in bed suddenly start in your psyche, opening a door that just leads to another door” Wherever this door leads, ‘Little Demon’ is a psychic journey to be returned to on repeat.

TRACK LISTING

Little Demon
Little Demon (richard Dawson’s Haunted Wine-cellar Version) Feat: Jussi Lehtisalo

We just wanted to jam really and see what happened” reasons Paddy Shine of GNOD fourteen years on from their inception in Salford. “That led us down the road of constructing a vibe or an atmosphere for playing live. We played a lot of squats, house gigs and parties in the early days. We lived in each others pockets - shared ideas, books, films etc. We just got on one. Some heads came along for the ride. Good times.” This momentum gathered quickly into a band with formidable psychic power, captured in style on Easy To Build, Hard To Destroy - a compilation of tricky-to-find, obscure and unreleased material from the heady early days of the band, all released on vinyl for the first time. It’s the sound of an uncompromising devotion to rapture through noise and repetition, a portrait of a band whose anarchic approach and raw intensity any other outfit would be frankly terrified to follow onstage. Captured in the hypnotic rhythmic drive and intimidating atmospheres of tracks like ‘They Live’ and ‘Inner Z’ (both only previously available on Myspace) is a mantric energy which take a jumping-off point from the Krautrock, Japanese rock and underground American psychedelia the band were hammering at the time, as well as the droogy nihilism of The Stooges debut. Yet these feral experiments reach far beyond into a headspace that acknowledges no boundaries, rock orthodoxy or genre constriction. “We’re always searching for new music, new thoughts, new experiences” says founder member Chris Haslam, “That drove us a lot in the early days, and still does” A full decade, countless enlightened minds and scores of ruptured speaker cones later, the GNOD journey continues unabated - onward to fresh creation and new annihilation.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Aaah, Gnod. I honestly love everything they've ever done, and this gives a perfect insight into the genesis of their own particular brand of narcotic psychedelia. Lysergic grooves, crushing sludge and cacophonous noise all play a part here, as perfectly balanced back then as it is today. Absolutely essential.

TRACK LISTING

01. Elka
02. Inner Z
03. They Live
04. 5th Sun (Chaudelande Version)
05. A Very Special Request
06. Deadbeatdisco!!! Part 1
07. Deadbeatdisco!!! Part 2
08. Frostbitten 

As has often been noted, psychedelic music can involve causal links between getting out of it and getting into it. Conversely, expansion of consciousness can be found by heading deep into the roots that a band explores, and journeying to the centre of their inspiration.

Thus, a curious paradox is attained, whereby the traditional elements of an outfit’s sound are superseded by them blasting their core vibrations into unchartered territory. Such is the case with the new opus from third-eye visionaries Hills, a dizzying journey that traverses through the band’s origins and beyond to new dimensions.The Gothenburg-based Hills are entering their ninth year of existence, in which they’ve released two full-length albums, the second of which, ‘Master Sleeps’ saw a vinyl outing on Rocket last year.

Part of a rich scene in their homestead also including friends and Rocket Recordings label mates Goat, they form the new chapter in a tradition of Swedish psychedelia that found its origins in late-’60s and early ‘70s freakouts and mind-melts by the likes of Baby Grandmothers and Älgarnas Trädgård - not to mention the unholy trinity of Pärson Sound, International Harvester and Träd Gräs och Stenar - before being developed by the likes of The Spacious Mind and Dungen in the last two decades. These inspirations make their mark on ‘Frid’ by journeying inward, via mantric repetition and hip-shaking pulsations as on the ten-minute monolith, ‘ Och Solen Sänkte Sig Röd’, yet they can also lurch into the unknown via the fuzz/wah odysseys of the aptly monikered ‘National Drone’ and the ceremonial exhortations of the closing ‘Death Will Find A Way.’As they also showed recently at a rare and spellbinding appearance at Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia, Hills have landed on a rich and intoxicating sound that sidesteps the cliches and humdrum stylistic foibles that often plague modern-day psych, in the process breathing new life into an approach that can sometimes seem in danger of appearing redundant through lack of imagination.

‘Frid’, their most out-of-mind and out-of-sight effort to date, crystallises everything that makes these Scandinavian satyrs stand out from the global herd; adventurous experimentation and fearless hallucinatory intensity, rendered with brass-knuckle fortitude. The end result is 38 minutes that translate into a feast for seasoned crate-diggers and fresh-faced converts alike. There is, indeed, gold in these here Hills.

TRACK LISTING

1) Kollektiv (4:44)
2) National Drone (7:47)
3) Anukthal Is Here (5:53)
4) Milarepa (3:02)
5) Och Solen Sänkte Sig Röd (10:52)
6) Death Will Find A Way (4:46)

“The rumors are true; Providence, Rhode Island is permeated with a mysterious energy”. So says Dave Litifreri, guitarist and vocalist of Urdog. “Some of us focused this energy, learned to live with the ghosts and tell their story.” It’s a story chronicled on Long Shadows, the new Urdog retrospective on Rocket Recordings - the work of a mercurial band whose music may have been summoned from fog and ghosts, yet possesses considerable staying power beyond their brief time on the planet. “We were influenced by the horror of latecapitalism in general every day” says drummer and vocalist Erin Rosenthal, “This glued and glues us together, also love of bicycles, french fries and faerie folk. Big influences for me were Robert Wyatt, Incredible String Band, Dagmar Krause, but especially This Heat, Riot Grrrl and 90’s hardcore.”

From such disparate inspiration came psychically heavy jams and wild improvisational voyages from this triumvirate which chart an instinctive and wild journey, drawing the interplanetary dots between early ‘70s freak-flag-waving transgressions and the folk-tinged frontiers of the early 21st century US underground. Mantric repetition, ceremonial ambience and fuzz/wah tinged blowouts take equal prominence in this dreamlike realm. Drawing the interplanetary dots between the drone ’n’ klang of Amon Düül II and the cultish hallucinations of Sunburned Hand Of The Man, and replete with both an earthiness of approach and a powerful celestial intensity. “We used our intuitive connection to let three distinct voices be heard” reflects Dave. “There was no foundation; they supported each other. Once that is achieved, a vibe develops. Getting into the space of a song is something you can’t notate. We had the keys, but getting to the door was the trick. Some nights we got all the way through the roof to the stars.

TRACK LISTING

A:

01. The Open: Intro
02. Ice On Water
03. Ani Nie Ma
04: The Open: Extract

B:

01. Eyelid Of Moon
02. DMZ
03: Zombie Cloud

When two planets collide in any solar system, the catastrophic result will most likely reduce both to dust and ash, sending warm debris hurtling through space. Yet from destruction, comes creation. So to the new and sixth record by Pharaoh Overlord - a cataclysmic clash with bewitching results. The band’s current duo of Tomi Leppänen and Jussi Lehtisalo first channelled their love of krautrock-damaged monomania into synth-driven motorik soundscapes on 2019’s ‘5’ yet this new exploration is a step way beyond, into a chilly and captivating electronic panorama. Beholden to the melodies and textures of Kraftwerk yet also the cinematic austerity of EBM and the effervescent pulse of classic Italo-pop, it’s further abetted by fierce and corrosive vocals from longtime collaborator and Sumac/Isis/Old Man Gloom seer Aaron Turner, which stand atop these futuristic serenades not unlike the fevered delivery of a dystopian hellfire preacher. The result, richly coherent yet startling even for the unpredictable world of this band, arrives like a series of otherworldly epiphanies. The opening ‘Path Eternal’ sets its stall out in style, marrying Moroder and Mayhem with a hint of the apocalypse manifesto of Skinny Puppy lurking in the middle distance. ‘Arms Of The Butcher’ is a strident anthem for a modern pandemonium, ‘Blue Light Hum’ meanwhile comes on like a robotic Neu! summoning end-credits euphoria. And most audaciously of all, ‘Without Song All Will Perish’ takes the urbane yet decadent sound of Voulez-Vous-era ABBA and reinvents it as a venomous disco Gotterdämerrung.

Aaron Turner was sent this material by Tom and Jussi and initially ask to contribute to two or three songs to a sharp deadline, but the results soon revealed themselves to be so powerful that he ended up writing lyrics for the whole album, his vicious but uplifiting vision taking inspiration from the melodic yet scabrous likes of Killing Joke, Leatherface and Kill The Thrill. “I was also thinking of Drawing Down The Moon era Beherit where the music had gone almost entirely electronic and the only vestige of the metal aesthetic that remained was the vocal style” he notes “That rub of “artificial” music and organic/humanistic/off kilter vocals was intriguing for me.” Written as the pandemic began to dominate world events in 2020, the resulting emotional turmoil couldn’t help but heavily affect its lyrical slant of this record. 6 has therefore become a record based on separation – the physical distance between the band members themselves, as well as the isolation of the quarantine itself. Yet it’s also a record concerned with finding a way forward amidst the modern cataclysms that surround - channelling negative experience into a positive change. True to form, like a brightly underlit disco dancefloor flashing out a warning of danger, the alchemical force of 6 is equal parts hedonistic rapture and dark revelation.Let him who have understanding reckon the number of the beat, for it is a human number. Its number is 6

TRACK LISTING

01 Path Eternal (6.35)
02 Arms Of The Butcher (5.10)
03 Without Song All Will Perish (8.14)
04 Tomorrow’s Sun (6.13)
05 Blue Light Hum (14.00) 

Porto-based experimental duo Paisiel comprise Portuguese drummer João Pais Filipe and German saxophonist Julius Gabriel. Both full-time musicians across several genres and disciplines, with Rocket Recordings having just released a collaborative album between João and Salford hit squad Gnod titled ‘Faca De Fogo’, the vibe Paisiel achieve across their second album ‘Unconscious Death Wishes’ sounds specific, singular and ultimately unique.

The pair first met in 2014, began recording as Paisiel in 2017, released their first, self-titled album on cassette through local label Lovers & Lollypops in 2018 and had it pressed onto vinyl in 2019 courtesy of Rocket Recordings, who have maintained the partnership for this follow-up. A progression from what was already forward-facing music, ‘Unconscious Death Wishes’ is a single 39-minute piece recorded using improvisation based around composed structures, or what the drummer calls “instant composition”.

Beginning quietly and mournfully, an array of percussion, avantelectro synths (think Cabaret Voltaire or Muslimgauze) and expansive sax swiftly takes hold. At times, this could be a late 60s proto-Krautrock cafeteria jam, early 70s New York loft jazz happening or Brazilian street parade from whichever decade takes your fancy.Listeners might read all kinds of emotions or states of mind into this music: Paisiel themselves play to transcend such earthly concerns. ‘Unconscious Death Wishes’ is their way of evoking, in Julius’ words, “landscapes, shapes, colours, proportions and movements”.

TRACK LISTING

A. Unconscious Death Wishes Part 1
B. Unconscious Death Wishes Part 2

In 1998 Rocket Recordings launched with a debut split 7” between Bristol bands The Heads and Lillydamwhite. So it is fitting that the labels 200th release is a 7” by the band Anthroprophh – the Bristol three piece that features Paul Allen from The Heads and Gareth Turner the former bass player from Lillydamwhite. ‘Toilet Circuit EP’ is the bands first release since their mammoth double album Omegaville which was released to high acclaim in 2018. The three tracks that make up this EP follow on perfectly from the dense and psychedelic sounds of Omegaville – a feverish tirade of maximalism. Anthroprophh manage to find equal space for everything-on-11 riffage of The Stooges, kraut rock repetitions, Butthole Surfers-esque bedlam, and surreal British humour.

A frustrated social commentary of todays paranoid world dictate the subject matter of the three songs on the EP. Six Six Sigma is named after a truly awful corporate training company, Too Old lists the frustrations of age and growing old, and Toilet Circuit is a song about the ‘fun’ and tribulations of touring the ‘toilet circuits’ of the UK. Like previous Anthroprophh releases it is Allen’s guitar playing itself, that transcends the band to ‘higher’ limits. Globally renowned amongst freaks and connoisseurs alike from his untouchable ontributions to The Heads. Taking Hendrix and Asheton-esque shapes and warping them beyond recognition into new paradigms, he also cites guitarists like Michael Karoli, early-‘70s Robert Fripp, Giles Buchan of Human Beast, Fred Frith and Geinrich of Guru Guru as influences, yet this ear-splitting treble-heavy scree and these heavenly FX-driven cacophonies could be the work of no-one else but this particular six-string iconoclast, who drives his trademark sound beyond anything he’s previously attempted in any incarnation. ‘Toilet Circuit EP’ are the first Anthroprophh tracks to feature a new sticksman – the drumming skills of Bristol legend Steve Dew, who cut his rhythmic teeth with Cup of Tea Records band Spaceways and the Bristol psych-jazz supergroup Fuzz Against Junk who released music via Geoff Barrow’s Invada Records. In the tradition of most great out-rock and psych-noise - ‘Toilet Circuit EP’ feels very much like a foot placed firmly on the accelerator in search of dimensions unknown - a liminal zone where fuzz and wah transcend space and time

TRACK LISTING

01. Six Six Sigma
02. Too Old
03. Toilet Circuit 

“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig” reasoned George Bernard Shaw. “You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.” True to form, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs have left the wiser of us aware that they are no band to be messed with. This is made manifest on ‘Viscerals’, their third proper, and an enormous leap forward in confidence, adventure and sheer intensity even from their 2018 breakthrough ‘King Of Cowards’.

Incisive in its riff-driven attack, infectiously catchy in its songcraft and more intrepid than ever in its experimental approach, ‘Viscerals’ is the sound of a leaner, more vicious Pigs, and one with their controls set way beyond the pulverising one-riff workouts of their early days. Yet Pigsx7 have effortlessly broadened their horizons and dealt with all these new avenues without sacrificing one iota of their trademark eccentricity, and the personality of this band has never been stronger, whether on the Sabbathian and philosophical warcry of ‘Reducer’, the debauched, Jane’s Addiction-tinged swagger of ‘Rubbernecker’, the Melvins vs Sonic Youth demoltion derby of ‘New Body’ or even the demented MBV-meets-Twisted-Sister party-banger from hell that is ‘Crazy In Blood’.

“We’re a peculiar bunch of people - a precarious balance of passion, intensity and the absurd” notes vocalist Matt Baty. Such is the unstoppable character of this unique and ever-porcine outfit; still the hungriest animals at the rock trough.

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: There's little more fitting for our times than the grooving, distorted assault of Pigsx7. Encompassing the political leanings of hardcore and punk with the crisp, glacial distortion of more modern metal and the snarling vox of garage rock, all imbued with the cleverly written and melodically astute compositions of perfect rocking indie, the Pigs have once again proven that they have something to say, and you'll hear it whether you're listening or not (you should be listening).

TRACK LISTING

01. Reducer
02. Rubbernecker
03. New Body
04. Blood And Butter
05. World Crust
06. Crazy In Blood
07. Halloween Bolson
08. Hell's Teeth

Gnoomes, the Russian outfit who blend a potent mix of psychedelic stargaze, kraut techno and kosmiche pop return with a brand new album, MU! their third for Rocket Recordings. Since the release of their last album Tschak! the three piece has turned into a quartet with synth player Masha Piankova joining the band. And it was the success of their tours in the UK and Europe that subconsciously created a template and tone for where the band would go next with this new album; to capture that surging drive and throbbing assault of their pulverising live shows. “We decided to make this record more live and less electronic,” Sasha, singer and guitarist from Gnoomses said. “We were thinking about how to make it sound more dynamic.” Masha’s introduction was a key one, with her replacing Sasha on synth bass whilst he moved over to second guitar to add a fuller and more impactful sonic crunch. MU! has been part recorded in the same old soviet radio station where the band recorded Tschak! part in a professional studio and then part at home.

This was to ensure the best capture of Gnoomes live assault. The results brim with a magnitude and sense of coherence that belies some of the environment it was created in. Fuzz-driven guitars shift in engulfing waves, resembling shoegaze giants at their most ferocious, whilst elsewhere layered vocals stack on top of one another, weaving between pristine melody and augmented discordance. Whilst the glacial electronics and coldwave tendencies that soaked much of their previous album may be more absent here, this record pulses with an electronic tinge that bubbles more subtly under the surface of immersive guitars

The title Mu! has Japanese origins and comes from Zen Buddhism – something Sasha began to practice during past trying times - meaning both “no” and “nothingness” and the understanding that the acceptance of this concept can lead to enlightenment. “For me personally it’s a spiritual record,” he says. Although any sonic warbles of new age blandness couldn’t be further from the end results here. This is a cleansing record, no doubt, but one that washes over you with both brutal force and deft subtleness. With the completion of this album, it also wraps up a trio of records all connected via punctuation – Ngan! Tschak! Mu! - but with one each distinct in its own tone and sense of evolution. From Bowie to the Cure to Moderat, musical history is peppered with great musical trilogies and now Gnoomes’ Exclamation Mark Trilogy can be added to that.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: In classic fashion, Gnoomes have created yet another album that will i'm sure elicit excited 'What Is This?!' responses upon playing in the shop. Resplendent with Krautrock drive but accentuated with often manic synth phrases and mind-melting atmospheric electronic wizardry smeared over the top. Thoroughly mad, but entirely enjoyable.

TRACK LISTING

01/ Utro
02/ Sword In The Stone
03/ Irma
04/ Glasgow Coma State
05/ Sine Waves Are Good For Your Health
06/ Ursa Major
07/ Progulka
08/ How Do You
09/ Feel Now

London-based psychedelic stalwarts Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation are proud to reveal their third album 'Sacred Dreams' for Rocket Recordings. Continuing to dive into the deeper waters of experimentation, ‘Sacred Dreams’ is both a musically hefty amalgamation of reverb drenched space-rock and retro centric electronics, as well as an emotionally cathartic release for the band, marking a new direction and fresh approach.

Since their critically acclaimed album 'Mirage' was released, Josefin and writing partner Fredrik have relocated from Stockholm to London and have created a new Liberation around them - this new band consists of the powerful and intuitive assemblage of musicians; Maki (Go Team), Patrick C Smith (Eskimo Chain), Matt Loft (Lola Colt) and Ben Ellis, who’s worked with both Iggy Pop and Swervedriver. ‘Sacred Dreams’ was largely recorded at Press Play Studios (King Krule, Fat White Family, Yves Tumor, Stereolab, High Llamas and many others) run by Andy Ramsay of Stereolab, who also produced and even programmed his non synced drum machines adding a lot of inspiration to the album.

‘Scared Dreams’ invites you into the bands own dimensional soundscape, a world built with transcendental guitars, driving grooves and otherworldly, enchanting vocals, altogether seeped in layers of blissfully produced synths. Opener and lead single ‘Feel The Sun’ encapsulates this new direction perfectly before the anthemic ‘I Can Feel It’ makes the bands intentions known. Elsewhere playful 80s electronics sit alongside a shoegaze sensibility effortlessly and amongst the textured flow of the LP emerge pop hooks like the infectiously bluesy ‘Baby Come On’.

Josefin tells us “This album comes out of a period of heartbreak, loss and dissolution, but also of deep love, warmth and beauty unveiled in the middle of it. A sacred dream, the way we see it, is not necessarily a golden fluffy cloud river, but instead also contains all the shadows that need to be seen and felt in order to drop what has to go in order to truly live. And the dissonance of such a dream may not be immediately apparent, let alone the meaning of it. In a way all of these tracks seem to emanate from that place where we have almost reached a new shore, or maybe we missed it and are headed somewhere else entirely, but there’s no way of telling until afterwards.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Mine says: After the experimental krautrock LP ‘Horse Dance’ (2015) and the pulsing psychedelia on shop-favourite ‘Mirage’ (2016), London-based Swedes Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation return with their most diverse album to date, showcasing a variation of sounds, including, but not limited to, 80s synths, trippy, reverb-laden guitars and dreamy, 60s inspired pop. ‘Sacred Dreams’, which was written during a ”period of heartbreak, loss and dissolution”, is less of a sonic journey than its predecessors and instead seems to show that Josefin and her band don’t want to be confined to a particular genre. After opening with the electronic and motorik dance tracks “Feel The Sun”; “I Can Feel It” and “Desire” the Spiritualized-esque “Hey Little Boy”, the transcendental “Only Lovers” and the blues stomper “Baby Come On” lead the album into a hazier, mellower and more psychedelic direction.

TRACK LISTING

01/ Feel The Sun
02/ Honey Slumber
03/ I Can Feel It
04/ Desire
05/ Hey Little Boy
06/ Only Lovers
07/ Baby Come On
08/ New Horizons
09/ Caramel Head
10/ Let It Come
11/ Whatever You Want
12/ Floating Away

In the near-twenty year period of Rocket Recordings’ existence, its ethos has expanded in untold directions, yet always with the destruction of boundaries and the expansion of consciousness high on the agenda. Nonetheless, the original spirit of the label remains a universe that revolves around the twin planets of Fuzz and Wah - the mind-frying six-string duality that warps sound spectrums and overheats speaker cones in pursuit of reckless sensory overload.

What’s more, few guitarists have been richer exponents of just these two ingredients than Paul Allen, who not only appeared on the very first Rocket 7” of 1998 with The Heads, but who also fronts Anthroprophh, an outfit who take both garage-bound filth and wayward, abstract artistry to zones beyond comprehension. ‘OMEGAVILLE’ - the third release on Rocket for this power trio alongside bassist Gareth Turner and drummer Jesse Webb - lives up to its name in driving just such demented predilections into head-spinning chaos. Structured by Allen’s admission akin to Can’s ‘Tago Mago’, this is a cliff-edge into sanity-risking overload which has much in common with the glory days of 1971- the Nurse-With-Wound list realm of record-collector gold where heavy rock, nascent prog and wilfully art-damaged netherscapes thrived. OMEGAVILLE’ finds equal space for everything-on-11 riffage of a distinctly Stoogian/stygian stripe, bracing musique concrete, Butthole Surfers-esque bedlam, Chrome-style sci-fi noise-pop, surreal British humour, and what sounds essentially like a ‘60s NASA HQ going up in flames.

At the forefront of much of this, however, is Allen’s guitar playing itself - taking Hendrix and Asheton-esque shapes and warping them beyond recognition into new paradigms. Who’s to say exactly where Anthroprophh move on from this guileless aural endtime mission. Yet ‘OMEGAVILLE - in the tradition of most great out-rock and psych-noise - feels very much like a foot placed firmly on the accelerator in search of dimensions unknown - a liminal zone where fuzz and wah transcend space and time

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Thrashing, manic distortion, full-force psychedelia and thumping, heavy AF percussion. Anthroprophh are back.

TRACK LISTING

01. 2029
02. Dead Inside
03. Housing Act 1980
04. Oakmoll
05. Sod
06. Death Salad
07. Why Are You Smiling?
08. I
09. Maschine
10. Human Beast
11. OMEGAVILLE /THOTHB
12. Journey Out Of OMEGAVILLE And Into The........... 

The Lay Llamas, who consist of the Sicilian-born and raised but now Rome-based duo of Gioele Valenti and Nicola Giunta, release their debut album 'Ostro' on Rocket. Recorded in an old-house in the Segesta countryside of Sicily, Valenti and Giunta soaked up the history-imbued environment. The makeshift studio was located alongside the great Temple of Hera that dates all the way back to 6th century BC “We’ve been so influenced by the place’s mood, with that ancient presence in the air” says Valenti. These recording sessions have resulted in a heavily layered album, filled (but not clogged) with various instrumentation from the expected guitars, bass, synth and drums to the more unexpected sounds of Tibetan Bells and Ukulele.

Like any successful duo, harmony and contradiction are equally important artistic traits in their working relationship. Between the two they take in a continent-leaping, platform-splitting array of personal influences that then seeps into their lysergic output. Purely on a musical level there is a joint love of artists such as Ennio Morricone they then split off into the structured and the song heavy (Angels of Light, Nick Drake, Mike Scott) to the rhythmic, both the hypnotic and groove-laden sort (Fela Kuti, Broadcast, Sun Araw, Kraftwerk). Italian tradition plays a pivotal role too with the creeping tones and floating atmospheres of 60’s and 70’s Italian library and soundtrack music playing a subtle supporting-role.

This breadth of personal influences can be found in the emphasis of ‘Ostro’, it’s a constantly shifting record, never remaining stuck or fixated on anything for too long. Crossing continents, be it musically, stylistically or physically, seems to be something the pair return to over and over again, the subtle radiations of Africa that can be heard on the record are no accident, “I think that Sicilians are more like Africans than Europeans in some way. We have almost the same weather and architecture. We feel in our soul the same feeling of all Mediterranean people – a fatalistic instinct of drama. But in our music, Africa is such a metaphysical place, not so geographical, such a map on the sheet of the soul, connecting with ancient rites of Sun, different levels of enlightenment; a sense of a mystical path to follow.” Valenti offers. “A mystical path to follow” is perhaps the most apt description of 'Ostro'.

Whilst the duo work from a shared vision that places keen focus on stream-of-consciousness approaches or, as Valenti puts it “A prismatic panorama, or well, a BRAINMATIC PANORAMA!” there really is an ambiguity, an uncertainness and a sense of the unknown, the otherworldly and the mystical when traversing through the vast spheres of the record. The pair’s own descriptions of some of the album’s tracks are testament to the sprawling, shifting, mass of it all “Suicide and Oneida dancing together around a big campfire” – “Pagan post-punk!” – “a slow march for psychedelic warriors on the unknown planet” – “gospel-dub” – “A bad trip”. And a “trip” it certainly is, some records aim to exist by not coming from a particular place but to exist in the transitions and journeys in-between them. Be them real, mystical or imaginary, present or past, the focus is on the movement rather than the end destination and the Lay Llamas’ debut album 'Ostro' is most certainly one such record.

TRACK LISTING

01. Ancient People Of The Stars
02. We Are You
03. The Lay Llamas
04. Desert Of Lost Souls
05. Overmind
06. Archaic Revival
07. Something Wrong
08. In Search Of Plants
09. Voices Call