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

Rocket Recordings’ new Black Hole Series is a place where the unorthodox, otherworldly and esoteric can flourish, and there could be no more fitting first release for it than the most powerful metaphysical travelogue yet from Moundabout. Journeying still further into and beyond the landscapes from which this duo have unearthed inspiration, ‘Goat Skull Table’ is a transmission to give flight to spectral visions and include trance-states in abundance.The vibrations and manifestations of the duo of Paddy Shine(GNOD) and Phil Langero (Los Langeros, Damp Howl, Bisect) has always resonated within a very specific sense of place, transcending linear narratives and astral planes in a quest to unite timeless spirits with inner space. This third release for Rocket Recordings sees them colluding with the landscape of their surroundings, transcending linear narratives and astral planes in a quest to unite timeless spirits with inner space.The title track marks a focal point here; a Shamanic rite on which Langero’s charismatically charged mantras collude with an audial landscape somewhere on the map between the abstract spell-casting of Nurse With Wound and the druidic gnosticism of Julian Cope. This is Moundabout at their darkest and most ritualistic. Elsewhere, the hypnotic repetition of the twin ten-minute extrapolations ‘Blood On My Blanket’ and ‘Wagon’, and the potent incantatory chants of ‘Am I Not’ and ‘Brave New World’ glow with a rugged and charged dynamism redolent of the Swedish Psychedelia of Träd, Gräs & Stenar, uniting a minimal aesthetic with maximal impact. Dauntless, feverish, and reaching new heights of primal intensity ’Goat Skull Table’ is a formidable field guide to the earthen and other.

TRACK LISTING

1 - Goat Skull Table
2 - Brave New World
3 - Am I Not
4 - Blood On My Blanket
5 – Wagon

How does one approach the morning after a party for the end of the world? This is a question which Mamuthones had to ask themselves, in the wake of their last album for Rocket, 2018's 'Fear On The Corner'. Nonetheless, from the aftermath of this uncertain period has risen the still more flourishing realm of 'From Word To Flesh' - a colourful and multi-faceted creation very much befitting the outsider spirit of Rocket's new Black Hole imprint.“I believe that with this album a circle has been closed” reflects Mamuthones mainman Alessio Gastaldello. “We returned to the atmosphere of the first Mamuthones albums with the skills acquired throughout the journey, with new sounds and with new creative processes. I would say that what remains constant – and at the core of our music – is the obsessive rhythms and the search for a sonic rituality: this is for certain our trademark”. This is clear right from the curtain raiser 'Burn From Inside', which beams the emotive approach of the band through the shamanic prism of Coil's 'Ape Of Naples'. From there, hypnotic repetition marries to abstract abrasion and mournful laments with equal finesse, as redolent of the spiritual zest of Popol Vuh and Ash Ra Tempel as the gnostic folk of Six Organs Of Admittance. Elsewhere, 'A Symmetry Of Faith' summons a union of post-punk and psychically charged folk aligned with the recent work of Bristol's Beak. The Sardinian ritual of the Mamuthones – in which sinister masked figures weighed down with cattle bells conduct a ceremonial procession to ward off evil forces - has gone on for some two thousand years, and it may be that these ghoulish avatars are engaged in a celebration of the endless cycles of death and rebirth, fortifying spirits for a new epoch. Amidst the chaos and tumult of the 2020s, the band of this name has undergone just such a change themselves, and ‘From Word To Flesh’ is the fruit of their struggle. As Alessio says “With this album I think the Mamuthones have never been so unmediated, so naked: all masks gone”.

TRACK LISTING

1. Burn From Inside
2. A Cage Full Of Sins
3. Can't Be Done
4. Before You Leave
5. A Symmetry Of Faith
6. Son Of Myself
7. Carry On 

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The fifth album from Newcastle’s riff wizards Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs is defined by calculated aggression and self-lacerating lyrics. Its startling bonuses include playful synth work and the appearance of a giant from hip-hop. With its title juxtaposing absurdity and seriousness, this is 'Death Hilarious'.

Whereas 2023’s 'Land Of Sleeper' was conceived as an immersive headphones experience, this time Pigs strove for something more directly hostile. “We wanted it to be a slap in the face,” grins producer and guitarist Sam Grant. That objective came, in part, from playing so many gigs over the last couple of years. The band felt well-oiled and ripe to give listeners at home the kind of pummelling their audiences receive.

'Death Hilarious' does bring in some big surprises, particularly the track ‘Glib Tongued’, which has guest bars by El-P from Run The Jewels. When bassist John-Michael Hedley unwittingly wrote what his bandmates considered their equivalent of a hip-hop number, Pigs set their sights high and secured a blistering contribution from one of the world’s greatest rappers. That’s not to say Pigs have pivoted to nu-metal. 'Death Hilarious' is a diversely punishing record which shapeshifts through Sabbathian doom, grotesquely minimalist noise rock and cyclical post-metal fortissimos. Pigs continue to push themselves, too. Incongruous synthesiser solos appear where guitar histrionics would usually fit. Piano tracks lurk in the mix, adding near-subliminal depth to the maelstrom. ‘Stitches’ is like Motörhead trying to perform glam rock with a tipsy keyboardist. Then there’s the 100mph pace of cosmic-thrash opener ‘Blockage’. Distorted licks flying from the amplifiers of Grant and lead guitarist, Adam Ian Sykes, while the rhythm section sizzle behind. With all that power running through its veins, 'Death Hilarious' is easily going to be one of the best rock albums of 2025...and that is no joke!

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Newcastle's blistering Pigs x7 (EXACTLY seven) bring us a scuzzed-out version of their groundbreaking sound from 2023's mindblowing 'Viscerals'. There are riffs aplenty and heavy hitting lyrics, walls of noise and soaring, groovy basslines but there's also a load of garagey, saturated distortion and loads of muck. Classic pigs.

TRACK LISTING

1. Blockage
2. Detroit
3. Collider
4. Stitches
5. Glib Tongued (Feat. El–P)
6. The Wyrm
7. Carousel
8. Coyote Call
9. Toecurler 

Crankers of amp, torturers of fuzzbox and denizens of small-hours salvation, Thee Alcoholics dished out a rancorous and righteous debut in their decent ‘Feedback’ – one that filtered gnarled riffage and motorik malevolence through a uniquely debauched prism in pursuit of some extremely ill-advised audial dystopia.

Thee Alcoholics may have started life as the home-birthed brainchild of Rhys Llewellyn (Hey Colossus/Acidliner/Drmcnt) yet an evolution since has proven the ultimate form of this beastly creation to be the live arena. In assembling cohorts to turn these visceral jams into something to shake rafters and rattle pint-glasses, new frontiers of ornery intensity have made themselves manifest, and such is the form of the monstrous Bear Bites Horse Sessions, a live-in-the-studio document recorded with Wayne Adams at Bear Bites Horse studio in Haggerston, London, chronicling a band breathing life into a Stoogian paradigm, and doing so apparently whilst barely breaking a sweat.

Taking essential elixirs of in-the-red mania, hypnotic repetition and deathless swagger, these twelve jams walk a crooked path that neighbours the nihilistic vortex of Loop, the saturnine lurch of The Fall and the deadpan derangement of The Heads but remains possessed of a maverick charisma and mischief all its own. Lovers of lysergic heaviosity and the sound of a Marshall 4x12 violently spluttering its last will find much to satisfy here, but moreover Bear Bites Horse Sessions is a testimony to sonic punishment as a gateway to new horizons, audial excess as a path to wisdom, and answers, right or wrong, being found in the bottom of a glass.

TRACK LISTING

Baby I'm Your Man
It's So Easy
Power
The Hole I See
Feedback
A&E
Flick Of The Wrist
Turn On The Radio
Sweetheart
Politicians
SE23
Karen's God Plan

Less than six months after Gnod rewired their sound for the umpteenth time, with the release of deliciously detailed deep listener Spot Land, they’re back with another album and a whole new approach. Inner Fucking Peace comprises eight tracks for voice and electronics – varied in style but connected in feeling and recorded as a trio.

Chris Haslam and Paddy Shine, the two ever-present members in the Gnod lineup since their first stirrings in mid-2000s Salford, are completed by Portuguese vocalist MC Sissi. Inner Fucking Peace is the first time MC Sissi, or Cecilia de Fatima dos Santos, a very well known name in Portuguese experimental circles has recorded with Gnod. From the minimalist tuned percussion of ‘Stop’, to the shuffling beats and spaced-out synth on ‘Perde-Te Onde Quiseres’, to ‘Get Out’ and its ominous electronics and crashing industrial drums (combined with Sissi’s irate-sounding vocal, here Gnod are on a tip that compares to great Bristolian duo and recent touring partners Harrga), to the supremely chopped & screwed woodwind that’s central to ‘Flute Theme’, to ‘Reprise’s hypnotic hand drum workout, to ‘Tea & Eggs’ – ten minutes of reggaeton-gone-minimal-synth – to ‘Olivia’, named after Sissi’s niece and the track’s guest vocalist, to ‘Cannela Crematoria’ closing us out and hitting a zenith of gloominess with some more industrial battery folded in…this is a full on Gnod vibe shift that also makes total sense in their infamously extensive discography. With this band enjoying hard-won freedom from release schedule tyranny, they – just like us – don’t know what’s next on the recording agenda, or if there’ll be more Gnod & MC Sissi collab albums, but this is an engrossing introduction to the partnership. In the short term, the trio will be playing some European shows in the autumn, including a slot at Utrecht festival Le Guess Who? in November.

TRACK LISTING

01. Stop
02. Perde-te Onde Quiseres
03. Get Out
04. Flute Theme
05. Reprise
06. Tea & Eggs
07. Olivia
08. Cannela Crematoria 

The Ouroborus - that is, the icon of the snake or dragon eating its own tail - appears to some a statement of the brutality of nature. To others of a Gnostic disposition it symbolises the duality of the divine and earthly in mankind. But most commonly, it’s taken simply to mean the endless cycles of death and rebirth that characterise life on this planet. As such, it’s an image that looms large in the world of Goat, the ever-mysterious and endlessly revivifying collective whose latest album marks another adventure above and beyond this particular plane of reality.This may be a band that has named albums both Requiem and Oh Death, yet this eponymous salvo proves yet again that transcendence and metamorphosis are their watchwords. Goat sees this ever-unpredictable outfit summoning rhythmically-driven rituals in unmistakable, uplifting and scintillating style, equally adept at ignitiing dancefloors and expanding minds.

‘One More Death’ and ‘Goatbrain’ are spectacular curtain-raisers, embodying a hedonistic spirit driven by incisive funk and possessed by merciless fuzz/wah-drenched guitar. Yet elsewhere, the band’s love of hip hop is the fuel for the end-credits-epic album closer ‘Ourobourus’ which marries infectious chant to breathless Lalo Schifrin-style breakbeat action. And which also means ultimately, like the titular oldest allegorical symbol in alchemy, we’re right back where we started. As Brad Dourif’s character Hazel Moates intones in the 1979 movie Wiseblood, “Where you come from is gone; where you thought you were going weren’t never there. And where you are ain’t no good unless you can get away from it”; in Goat’s eternal now of renewal and revelation, there’s never been a more potent means of escape. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Will says: It’s Goat up and down, all the key elements present through their lush history superposing to make possibly their finest statement. Certainly their most complete. It’s the afrobeat influence of the earlier work, the adrenaline of Oh Death, and the doom-laden heaviness of Medicine. Opener ‘One More Death’ is an album unto itself, an ambitious and confident introduction to the record that courteously offers a bird’s eye view of the inferno before you are fully submerged, while cheeky two-note ‘Goatbrain’ is as good a dance of death as Goat have ever released. There’s fresh ground to be trodden here as well - ‘Fool’s Journey’ and ‘All Is One’ translate their soundtrack work into gorgeous, cinematic folk pieces, ‘Zombie’ introduces some tasteful trip-hop elements to Goat’s sonic cauldron, and finale ‘Ouroboros’ breaks the journey apart in as chaotic a way as it deserves.

TRACK LISTING

1. One More Death
2. Goatbrain
3. Fool’s Journey
4. Dollar Bill
5. Zombie
6. Frisco Beaver
7. The All Is One
8. Ouroboros

Last Summer, Daniel Foggin, guitarist, writer and chief architect of Smote, uprooted himself from his usual home in Newcastle to live and work in a farmhouse in Kelso, near the Scottish border. “Through the summer when I was working up there, myself and Rob (Smote drummer) would finish work and go sit by a small river and have a couple of beers in the sun, and it was the best thing ever” he relates “So I guess the philosophy is that to some people it looks like any other stream, but to us it was supreme happiness.”

Hence came the title of the fourth Smote album proper, one largely recorded in this same farmhouse – A Grand Stream.It’s an album that’s the truest incarnation thus far of his vision for this band – a full-scale psychic voyage into the ether and a drone-and-repetition-fuelled series of incantations that takes simple, primal ingredients and utilises them for the purposes of aural sorcery, summoning spectres and revelations aplenty in its wake.Whilst the folk-tinged, ceremonial ambience that Smote have made their trademark is present and correct here, utilising Swedish classic psych heaviness and Swans textures as fuel for the ominous rhythms of ‘Coming Out Of A Hedge Backwards’ and the uplifting cadences of opener ‘Sitting Stone Part 1’, Foggin and his cohorts also waste little time exploring new more eerie and ethereal textures and dimensions. The meditative ‘Chantry’ in particular sees them gravitate towards a headspace akin to the drone-based epiphanies of Kali Malone’s ‘Does Spring Hide Its Joy’ filtered through the transcendent amplifier worship of ‘Earth 2’. A Grand Steam takes this band – one who’ve always eschewed the cliches and stumbling blocks of all contemporary psych rock in favour of their own unique and wyrd vision – into a realm in which they transcend through willpower and skill alike into something preternaturally thrilling, mapping out their own crepuscular new territory Question is; dare you step over the threshold?

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Another beautifully hypnotic, storied collection of drone atmospherics and psychedelic scree from Daniel Foggin that brings to mind the wandering building drone of Elephant9 or Jackie O Motherfucker's loose, languid improvisation. An epic, hypnotic journey from Foggin & co.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sitting Stone Pt. 1
2. Sitting Stone Pt. 2
3. Coming Out Of A Hedge Backwards
4. Chantry
5. The Opinion Of The Lamb Pt. 1
6. The Opinion Of The Lamb Pt. 2

“We could go so far as to say that it is the human condition to be grotesque, since the human animal is the one that does not fit in, the freak of nature who has no place in the natural order and is capable of re-combining nature’s products into hideous new forms.”

So reckoned Mark Fisher in ‘The Weird And The Eerie’, which chronicled the means by which the uncanny can enter the everyday. Mwg Drwg, the second album from South Wales psychic seers Obey Cobra, is an album that dwells in exactly this kind of headspace, where the otherworldly meets the kitchen sink. Always a band who’ve sought out new dimensions to explore via their trademark warped post-punk, electronic and industrial influences, Obey Cobra have crafted surreal new shapes here. Taking influences as diverse as Diane Arbus, David Lynch and Sonic Youth, they balance out heaviosity and grace on the likes of the majestically discordant ‘Ten Of Wands’ Elsewhere, on the title track, the band sculpt a Jesus Lizard-esque rhythmic pulse, eerie vocal abstraction and the crepuscular downtempo atmosphere of Massive Attack’s Mezzanine into a uniquely haunting dreamscape. Mwg Drwg is where the weird and eerie are amplified to intimidating proportions It’s where grotesquely and beauty happily cohabit. It’s an aural exorcism of William Friedkin proportions that demands your immediate attention.

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

The history of BBC Maida Vale Sessions is familiar to The Utopia Strong. As musicians, and lifelong music fans, the legacy - the importance - of such recordings is not lost on them. Space and place influence creativity, as is the case here, and the sleeve is a loving homage to those classic BBC releases, affectionately nodding to Strange Fruit Peel Sessions from days of yore.These pieces, originally recorded live at Maida Vale for a Marc Riley session on BBC 6 Music in September 2022, capture The Utopia Strong stretching themselves and continuing to develop their aural explorations.The five-track album opens with the analogue arpeggios of ‘Minature Citadels’, a title perfectly summing up the imagery provoked by the music; evolving, jagged patterns of skylines and castellations, turrets and towers. The closing outro of squarks and drones could be twice as long and not outstay its welcome.

The nagging refrain running through ‘Lamp Of Glory’ is Mike York on the pipes, which he handmakes himself. The overall effect is a sublime, warped concoction of balearic energy and non-Western modes. ‘Disaster 2’ (a piece initially recorded on their second studio album, 2022’s International Treasure) begins with a beautiful synth drone that maintains its position, overpowering the modular patterns pulsating behind it, augmented by yet more glorious, lamenting pipes. The last two tracks both exceed ten minutes and allow the band to extend out further. Release comes as the drums kick in after six minutes of ‘The Tower Is Locked’, emulating the live sets The Utopia Strong have become famed for.The final track, ‘Weather All’, was also honed across several live performances. Having been booked for Andrew Weatherall’s Conveanza festival pre-lockdown, the band finally performed there in September 2022, following his passing. While performing this piece, the heavens opened and the entire festival, band and audience, were drenched. “It felt absolutely biblical”, says the band. Steve Davis has a rich history with the Beeb, but on this occasion he is wrangling his ever-expanding array of analogue synths, dilating his musical imagination. The heritage of the location and overall experience was not lost on the band.‘

Engelchen literally translates as ‘little angels’ What’s more, for many in the febrile, dangerous era of the 1930s in Nazi-occupied Europe, as they wrote letters to arrange their paths out of danger as refugees, these were Ida and Louise Cook. Ida and Louise spent much of their early years in Sunderland, and in adulthood lived in a suburb of London with their parents. They were enormous fans of opera and led relatively quiet and unfussy lives. Yet secretly these resourceful and eccentric women were using their musical obsessions as a means to help dozens of refugees escape with their lives. Their secretive heroics now almost beggar belief, and when Alison Cotton, herself from Sunderland, first discovered their story, she couldn’t understand why it wasn’t more widely known. Furthermore, she was inspired by their courage, fortitude and derring-do to compose Engelchen, a musical tribute to the duo’s lives and work, now a full-length release by Rocket Recordings.

Throughout, this story is relayed by Alison, whether acapella or by means of richly emotive string arrangements, with a deftness of touch, sensitivity and intensity that matches the feverish nature of the experiences and the unforgiving environs in which they took place. Engelchen is a transporting work whose spirit is situated in a very specific time and place, Nonetheless, the story of Ida and Louise Cook is more than merely an inspirational tribute to two mavericks who beat the odds in an unforgettable feat of altruism. It’s a celebration of the human spirit, one that reflects a universality in its narrative which transcends the boundaries of history and impacts very urgently on our daily lives. Whatever attempts may be made to tell this story, it’s hard to imagine one that resonates deeper than Engelchen.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A fittingly haunting, but beautifully presented new LP from Alison Cotton on the always-superb Rocket Recordings. Intensely cinematic instrumentals, shadowy operatic phrasing and swooning, wistful melancholy abound. A warming tribute, and a typically skilled and beautifully emotive selection from Cotton. Lovely.

TRACK LISTING

01. We Were Smuggling People’s Lives
02. The Gramophone Circle Parties
03. Engelchen
04. The Letter Burning
05. Crépuscul
06. Dolphin Square
07. Engelchen Now

Thee Alcoholics are the brainchild of Rhys Llewellyn, a longtime Rocket Recordings alumnus whose background leans as heavily into the bassbin-shaking realms of electronic music as it does the tinnitus-inducing world of howling, cranked-up ampstacks. Not content with hammering drumskins for numerous floor-shaking records on the Rocket discography from the likes of Hey Colossus and The Notorious Hi-Fi Killers, he’s also been responsible for brain-rearranging electronic works under the Drmcnt and Acidliner monikers. Thee Alcoholics, however - which initially gestated as a result of Rhys himself wanting to pursue the somewhat hostile sound in his own head during lockdown - maps out a collision course between all of the above.

Cranky and cantankerous yet lysergically aligned, Feedback is mesmeric rock with swagger, warped into sci-fi shapes by the spirit and sonics of bass and soundsystem culture. The psychedelic shapes here are redolent of the ur-klang of The Fall and the monolithic lurch of The Heads, the motorik malevolence less an uplifting trip to the heavens than a drill down to the earth’s core. Discernible in these jackhammer beats, grimly murmured vocals and delirious dirges to certain heads may be the trash futurism of Chrome, the decomposed stomp of unsung legends Earl Brutus and the electro-punk attack of Six Finger Satellite, yet all of the above co-ordinates are waylaid effortlessly by a balls-out intensity and a fearsome intent on aural oblivion at all costs. Feedback may be elemental and primal, yet this is no psych comfort-blanket nor retro-fetishism, rather a repetition-driven journey headlong into intimidating territory unknown. Get on board, and strap yourselves in for a bumpy ride. 

TRACK LISTING

01. What’s The Crack? (What’s The Story?)
02. Baby I’m Your Man
03. Sweetheart
04. It’s So Easy
05. Pity Me
06. Feedback
07. You’re The Zero
08. Se23
09. Dumb & Happy

We are all artefacts for space travel, to paraphrase William Burroughs. Yet how to facilitate such journeys into either inner or outer space? This luckily is where Rocket Recordings come in, 25 years into their continuing mission. Operating from a 1998 launchpad in Bristol, Rocket’s questing vision has made them pathfinders for a particular kind of psychic terrain. The label may have been founded on disparate and dissolute passions - the vital grit and street-level attack of old-skool Hip Hop and Thrash Metal, the power of repetition, the astral awaydays of Hawkwind, the Fuzz and Wah of garage rock and early Sub Pop and the constellational signposts that connect Can, Funkadelic, Wax Trax Records & Aphex Twin on a map to other dimensions. Yet the stubbornly uncompromising ethos has always been to push beyond boundaries into areas which even the true heads have thus far never ventured. To celebrate a quarter century on the outer realms of exploration, Rocket presents you with a vital celebratory compilation collecting together eight of the current Rocket roster, all offering full-throttle salvos of metaphysical salvation. Resplendent in third-eye-cleansing sleeve art referencing French comic artist Philippe Caza, it’s a travelogue that traverses from the amp[1]damaging repetitive thunder of Gnod’s ‘Nought Sayin’ to the minimal electronic spellcasting of J. Zunz’s ‘Radix’, from the unsettling invective of Shit & Shine’s gleefully ornery ‘What’d You Mean, What?, What’ to the drone-based bliss of Centrum’s ‘Dü är så värdefull’, from Och’s nocturnal revelations to The Utopia Strong’s celestial visions, and from the potent rural vibrations of Smote’s ‘Coal Tongue’ to Goat’s dancefloor-ready ‘Goatsnake’ without losing coherence or focus.LAUNCH300 measures out the widescreen horizons of Rocket Recordings as it embarks on the next quarter century - a label with its feet on the ground and its head mapping out a defiant course for the unknown. Get on board.

TRACK LISTING

1. Smote – Coal Tongue
2. Goat – Goatsnake
3. Och – Inebriantia
4. Shit & Shine – What’d You Mean, What?
5. Gnod – Nought Sayin’
6. J. Zunz – Radix
7. Centrum – Du Är Så Värdefull
8. The Utopia Strong – Harpies

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.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Rocket recordings are the perfect home for psych-drone monoliths Bonnacons Of Doom, and the incendiary 'Signs' is brimming with scathing guitars and hypnotic vocal phrases. Brilliantly heavy, and undeniably enjoyable.

TRACK LISTING

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

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.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Teeth Of The Sea are back! With bold strokes of post-punk and kosmische synthwork and swirls of psychedelic wonder, 'Hive' is their most compelling work to date. The ever-reliable Rocket Recordings on fire as always.

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

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.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Another slab of Goat for the ol' ears is never a bad thing, and on 'Medicine' the swedish psychedelic powerhouse are on peak form. It's more of the same woozy psychedelic fare but honed to perfection through years of meticulous practice. Fuzzy guitars and scattered percussion, thundering basslines and loads of tremolo. Brilliant.

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

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 

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)

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 

A travelogue that unites physical and inner space, a series of trance states rendered in vivid colour, a delirious portal into the ether. Marlene Ribeiro’s debut for Rocket Recordings and first album under her own name is all of this and much more. Toquei No Sol is a fresh new chapter for this unique artist, by far the most melodic and transcendent outing yet for her hypnotic dreampop This is only the latest release in a long history of sonic experimentation for Marlene, which includes her previous work as Negra Branca and as a member of GNOD, not to mention collaborations with Valentina Magaletti and Thurston Moore. Toquei No Sol is also a record with a very distinctive and potent sense of place, paradoxically despite having been woven together from recordings made in Ireland, Wales, Portugal, Madeira and Salford. Marlene’s fleet-footed approach to melody rings through even as the tracks conjure visions of heat-hazes, meditative spaces and late-night epiphanies. Although listeners may hear echoes of the loop-driven psychedelia of Panda Bear’s Person Pitch or the incantatory ululations of Pocahaunted in these beguiling soundscapes and magick-strewn mantras, the truth is that the aesthetic here is very much Marlene’s alone. “It’s all a big misty haze of nostalgia, playfulness, self-reflection nd hopefulness” is what Marlene reckons herself. Yet Toquei No Sol is also a transporting vision from an artist both returning to her roots and looking out to new celestial horizons.

TRACK LISTING

01. Quatro Palavras
02. Sangue De Lua De Lobo
03. Toquei No Sol
04. You Do It
05. Forever
06. What It Is

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

Formidable psychic warriors, channelers of the mystic and proponents of a spiritual quest that transcends this realm, Goat remain a band shrouded in mystery. Travelling from their inscrutable origins in the Swedish village of Korpilombo across the stages and festivals of the world in the last decade, this band has created their incendiary music entirely according to their own co-ordinates.

With all this in mind, the casual observer might have guessed from its title that ‘Requiem’, their beatific and melancholic album of 2016, was to be their last. Yet the ancestral spirits summoned by their art are always restless. Thus the eternal cycles of rebirth have triumphantly produced ‘Oh Death’ - a ceremonial conflagration as powerful as any this band has made.Invigorated by forces we can only guess at the origins of, ‘Oh Death’ is a party to which all are welcome. Blithely waving away easy classification, these heat-hazed serenades are just as comfortable in the headspace of vicious ‘70s funk as they are in zesty ZE records post-punk.

Folk-haunted incantations and free jazz skronk here find common ground, buoyed by relentless forward motion and raucous energy. Yet all of the above is locked into a delirious gnostic groove that threatens to throw the whole shebang spiraling into orbit. ‘Oh Death’ is driven by a supernatural charge that unifies, invigorates and transcends borders, whether geographical, musical, or between this world and the next. In the hands of these sages and soothsayers, this is just the beginning. Goat Is ‘Oh Death’, Long Live Goat.

STAFF COMMENTS

Will says: Goat returns with another musical edict from above, a kaleidoscope of demented funk of which the human spirit is desperately in need, according to the band. The fuzzy psychedelia of cracking lead single ‘Under No Nation’ was a perfect mission statement for this phase of the band, so strap in for a wonderfully weird ride with the undeniable forebearers of oddity.

TRACK LISTING

01. Soon You Die
02. Chukua Pesa
03. Under No Nation
04. Do The Dance
05. Apegoat
06. Goatmilk
07. Blow The Horns
08. Remind Yourself
09. Blessings
10. Passes Like Clouds

In a world hurtling towards new frontiers of horror on a daily basis, there’s precious little time for pause. For the self respecting artist, the only reasonable solution is psychic warfare. Such is the terrain of Petbrick on the titanic and transformative Liminal. Here on their second album the duo of Wayne Adams (Big Lad/Johnny Broke) and Iggor Cavalera (Sepultura/Cavalera Conspiracy/Soulwax) lays waste to all or any constrictions in its path, Blending a vast sonic landscape with a relentless compunction to break the pain barrier, Liminal is a dizzying exercise in overdrive which can take in industrial abrasions, pulverising rhythmic drive, acid-damaged freakery, cinematic tension and balladic gravitas in disarmingly coherent fashion.

Other heads and personalities also came on board to add richness and intrigue to the onslaught - “I believe we got an amazing team of collaborators - from old school friends like Neurosis’ Steve Von Tilll and Converge’s Jacob Bannon to new school artists like Paula Rebbeledo from Rakta and New York doom rappers Lord Goat and Truck Jewelz” notes Iggor. This is an album birthed in difficult times and expressly engaged with raging against the dying of the light. As Iggor puts it “Liminal is an insane mirror of what being isolated feels like - madness through noise experimentations” An alchemical vision fit to both elevate the spirit and destroy everything in its path, ‘Liminal’ is the sound of Petbrick blasting their way through the boundaries of a fresh hell. 

TRACK LISTING

01. Primer
02. Arboria
03. Pigeon Kick
04. Raijin
05. Lysergic Aura (Feat. Lord Goat & Truck Jewelz)
06. Damballa
07. Ayan
08. Grind You Dull (Feat. Jake Bannon)
09. Chemical Returns
10. Distorted Peace (Feat. Paula Rebellato)
11. Reckoning (Feat. Steve Von Till)

Alison Cotton presents The Portrait You Painted of Me, a new 6-track album – her first for Rocket Recordings (released on Feeding Tube in the USA). Like Alison’s previous solo albums, the touchstones of her immersive sound are viola, harmonium and voice, merged together to create a rich suite of songs. ‘Mumurations Over the Moor’ is a wordless piece of layered vocals, drifting like fog towards a sunset over the green undulations of North East England (from where she hails). ‘The Last Wooden Ship’ evokes the shipyards of Sunderland using droning harmonium and viola lines, laced with piano and percussion events, while her voice calls out like one of Tim Buckley’s Sirens urging listeners to a rocky demise. ‘I Buried the Candlesticks’ has a haunted, traditional feel with its dolorously folky viola melody laid across a thick carpet harmonium, and small bursts of percussion that sound like cannonade heard through the thick cold walls of a castle in winter. ‘That Tunnel Underground Seemed Neverending’ is a musical vision of Northumberland’s mining culture at the dawn of the 20th Century - labyrinthine, subterranean, dimmer than night. ‘Violet May’, the only traditional “song” on the album, was inspired by a trip to Vita Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst Castle.

Its plot deals with a reclusive artist who has forsaken all else for a life of solitary creation in her tower. The structure and sound reminiscent of a post-modern approach to lyrical concerns dealt with by folk singers of the British ‘60s, but the actual arrangement is closer to something John Cale might have done with Nico on The Marble Index. The closing track, ‘17th November 1962’, inspired by nearly-forgotten memories of disaster with a fishing boat, a storm and an ill-fated rescue attempt. The song (and album) ends with what sounds like a forlorn foghorn cutting across waves of night with Alison’s voice again evoking the Sirens.

As with its predecessors, The Portrait You Painted of Me was recorded at home in London, beautifully produced by Alison’s partner, Mark Nicholas, and it contains all the elements that result in the sombre, exquisite melancholy she creates. This is some serious and remarkable stuff.

TRACK LISTING

01. Murmurations Over The Moor
02. The Last Wooden Ship
03. I Buried The Candlesticks
04. That Tunnel Underground Seemed Neverending
05. Violet May
06. 17th November 1962

From its genesis on the sun-drenched streets of Tirana, Albania to the wider sonic spheres inhabited by adventurous heads everywhere, Brussels-based deep digger soFa has assembled a fresh outing in his eclectic compilation series. Whilst the Elsewhere banner has previously focused on unorthodox spaces of the dancefloor via a series of different labels, including experimental imprints like Emotional Response, Music For Dreams and Kalahari Oyster Cult.

The latest instalment is something else entirely. Elsewhere VXII is a beguiling collection of songs and soundscapes that form a bridge between the traditional and the otherworldly.This gathering of outernational rhythms, drones and folk tales takes in a dizzying array of cultures and folkloric traditions, mapping out their common ground with style and finesse. Here we witness a Romanian Christian carol (from Colinde Netemperate) side by side with glacial abstraction from a Mexican artist based in Belgium (Vica Pachecho) The ritualistic mantras of Ladr’ache share headspace with the beatific acid folk of Odessey And Oracle. Meanwhile, ululatory drone-based rapture (courtesy of NÅR) marries with electronic reinterpretations of Greek rural serenades from Anna vs June.Unified by deep roots in yet branching out fearlessly into the unknown, all these stylings and more cohere and coalesce into an intoxicating patchwork. Yet as much as it may be driven by a DJ’s internal logic, this is primarily a work of border-free serendipity. The same forces that introduced soFa to the violin of Aida Al Hani while walking in Tirana, forging the impetus for this collection, are those that sent both soFa and Rocket Recordings in the direction of NÅR for the album entirely independently of each other. Navigating currents and vibrations that unite the globe, Elsewhere VXIII is a psychic transmission from a singular place where the stars align.

TRACK LISTING

Aida Al Hani – Kafeja Gati
Colinde Netemperate – Din Patru Cornuri De Lume
Tempo Venus & Ox – Y
Pedro Castanheira & Caroline Oulman – A Saia Da Carolina
Nâr Feat. June As – Baba Mimoun
Ugne&maria – Apie Lubas (feat Poetry By Birute Kapustinskaite)
Ladr.ache – A Mi Fiasco (live In Casteau)
Vica Pacheco – El Fuego
Odessey And Oracle – J'ai Vu Un Croco
Praah – André
Anna Vs June – Dahtila
Nyati Mayi & The Astral Synth Transmitters – Lolokele
Cyril Cyril – Mariid
Kӣr – Zimovka

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 

“Holy Scum”. Say it out loud. It’s a name that can’t help but be spat out viciously; a snarling exclamative that fits the bludgeoning sludge and feedback drenched improv rock that its progenitors unleash on their debut for Rocket Recordings, Strange Desires.Initially a Manchester-based collaboration between guitarist Peter J Taylor (formerly of Action Beat) GNOD co-founder Chris Haslam on bass and his bandmate Jon Perry on drums, the thick gauze of Holy Scum’s jams have been pulled apart in production by one of half of legendary hip-hop duo Dälek, Mike Mare (aka Mike Manteca). He also provides the growling, guttural vocals.“When Mike got involved it became another thing entirely to what we had originally perceived” notes Haslam “He added a whole new dimension to what we had been working on.”“He kept asking if it was okay to fuck what we sent him up and we kept asking him to fuck it up even more” adds Taylor. “I kept referencing My Bloody Valentine in terms of creating a wall of noise, but we wanted it to be heavy as fuck.” The resulting dystopian tumult of sound thus also finds itself somewhere above and beyond the sonic scorched earth inhabited by early Swans, Godflesh and Shit And Shine.“All of the lyrics revolve around the collapse of society, feeling numb watching it happen, what it’s like on the other side communicating with the dead and looking to other worlds for relief” reckons Mare” Indeed, Strange Desires is a record for the moment, and beyond. A howl amidst a world fallen off its axis. Holy Scum are unflinching in their confrontation, meeting fire with fire on this most stunning debut.

TRACK LISTING

01. Never Feeling Your Endless Breathing
02. Room Of Cruelty
03. Everybody Takes You Just Take More
04. A World About To Die
05. Light Chooses Mine
06. Drowned By Silence
07. Useless Wonderful Doubt
08. Pcgfhilthposhi

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

Hypnagogia remains one of the most mysterious and haunting daily states of mind. Moments of revelation are wont to traditionally hit us particularly in the hinterland between dream and waking, It’s this particular headspace that’s very much the world of ‘Pö om pö’, the second Rocket Recordings released full-length record from Sweden’s equally mysterious OCH. Pö om pö (meaning ‘little by little’) is a journey further into inner space from ‘II’, the previous Rocket outing (which followed a 2014 cassette only release)

What’s mapped out here is a trajectory on the kosmische continuum that touches on the terrain of late 70s Sky records style ambience, the more overgrown quarters of Swedish experimental prog and the sun-baked lo-fi DIY cassette culture of the US early ‘00s.Dwelling in a smoke-clouded glow that’s equal parts sunset gold and effects pedal red, OCH have here transcended all influences to creating a tapestry of potent psychotropic sound. A record in which new horizons open up beyond the small hours, and where primeval wah-wah-abetted skronk and mantric folk[1]tinged repetition can collude to reveal new third-eye perceptions. Little By Little, Pö om pö , these forty minutes are here to bridge the chasms between conscious and subconscious, and in style.

TRACK LISTING

01. Bolid
02. Vadstena
03. Syzyrgy
04. Silverstjärnan
05. Isfält
06. Bråviken
07. Impetus
08. Ochra

Not unlike the supernatural deities from which they take their name, DJINN - the Swedish collective featuring members of Hills and GOAT in their ranks - have proven themselves a potent and mysterious force. Their first release for Rocket Recordings was a portrait of open-minded explorers foraying into the realms of free and cosmic jazz, but never overly reverential or in thrall to their own influences.

Following the ‘Avant De Servir’ tape which was released on Swedish label Zeon Light last year, ‘Transmission’ is a still more intrepid step into new terrain for DJINN - the mantric rhythms are hypnotic here, the freeform extrapolations hit new peaks of vivid abandon, and the moments of calm are blissfully meditative. Yet their sound palette extends into refreshing collisions of intent and metaphysical intensity that echo across the psychic landscapes of Sunburned Hand Of The Man-style freak-folk, as well as the polylingual fusion of jazz, European and Asian music that Don Cherry essayed on 1969’s ‘Eternal Rhythm’ and 1973’s ‘Organic Music Society’.

Amidst these intoxicating and richly eclectic soundworlds, the band are just as comfortable invoking Popol Vuh (as on the mellotronabetted title track) Art Ensemble Of Chicago and the lineage of Swedish underground music that found epiphanies in the radical folk-psych of Arbete Och Fritid whilst also sounding - crucially - like no-one but themselves.

For all the far-reaching explorations of altered states by which DJINN set out their stall, this collection of mystical headspaces - in all its fearless and feral glory - is proof positive that the band’s journey has only just begun. This transmission is set to ring out across dimensions unknown.

The album, which is ltd to 400 copies on colour vinyl comes with a download code that also contains as a bonus their 2020 ‘Avant De Servir EP’ that was originally released on cassette via Swedish label Zeon Light.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A heady and intoxicating mix of wandering percussion, jazzy groove and psychedelic arm-waving trippery, 'Transmisision' provides the perfect laid-back counterpoint to bands like like Goat or Altin Gun, with the free-flowing improvisational meandering perfectly offsetting the more standard psychey business. A brilliantly enjoyable journey.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sun Ooze
2. Creator Of Creation
3. Transmission
4. Nights With Kurupi
5. Jaguar
6. Urm The Mad
7. Love Divine
8. Orpheus

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

‘Headsoup’ is a new compilation that deepens the legend of mysterious Swedish psych collective Goat even further. Collecting rarities from across band’s celebrated career, including standalone singles, B-sides, digital edits and two enormous brand new tracks, it’s a globetrotting acid trip of a record that’s even bigger in its scope than their acclaimed studio LPs.

From the incendiary heavy psych of their earliest work, like debut B-side ‘The Sun And Moon’, to the serene ‘Requiem’-era alternate take ‘Union Of Mind And Soul’, to the simmering menace of their latest material, it’s a record as multifaceted as Goat themselves, packed with detours in every conceivable direction.

Taking in jazz-flute solos, pounding Afrobeat rhythms, ferocious desert blues, drifting Ethio-jazz, this is, as the name of Goat’s first album made clear, ‘World Music’ in its most complete form, a sound unrestrained by genre boundaries. Yet the band are anything but lazy appropriators. They approach their forebears with upmost reverence, articulating a celebratory cultural cross-pollination. And what about these two new tracks? ‘Fill My Mouth’ is a scuzzy psychedelic funk knockout, the sleaziest thing the band have ever recorded. ‘Queen Of The Underground’, meanwhile, is truly herculean, a swaggering psychedelic powerhouse of the very highest order.Sometimes dark and heavy, at others joyous and beautiful, like Goat themselves ‘Headsoup’ is mysterious, and constantly shapeshifting, difficult to properly pin down but constantly enthralling. Almost a decade since they first emerged from the depths of Scandinavia, there is still no other band on earth that sounds quite like them.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's crazy really, that an album of b-sides and unheard album rarities can be just as good as the curated LP's of the same band, but this is Goat we're talking about. A psychedelic and lysergic hitlist of everything that makes these bemasked Swedish rockers so great. Soaring and evocative, 'Headsoup' is a perfect entry point for a selection of Goat's many faces.

TRACK LISTING

A
1/ The Sun And Moon
2/ Stonegoat
3/ Dreambuilding
4/ Dig My Grave
5/ It's Time For Fun
6/ Relax

B
7/ Union Of Mind And Soul *unreleased On Vinyl
8/ The Snake Of Addis Adaba
9 /Goatfizz
10/ Let It Burn (Edit) *unreleased On Vinyl
11/ Friday Pt.1

7":
C12/ Fill My Mouth *unreleased
D13/ Queen Of The Underground *unreleased

(All Tracks Included On CD)

First Seance’ is the debut album by Land Trance, a new collaboration between Liverpool-based experimental musicians Andrew P.M Hunt and Benjamin D. Duvall, originally released via Forest Swords’ Dense Truth label in May 2020. Sharing rehearsal rooms, houses and band-mates for over a decade across Merseyside, the duo developed their respective practices in tandem with each other – Duvall delving into percussive ensemble composition as the founder of the acclaimed Ex-Easter Island Head, Hunt exploring the possibilities of songwriting, synthesis and texture as Dialect (with a release for RVNG - Under~Between - due March 2021) and leader of art rock band Outfit. Working together as Land Trance, they utilise spontaneous electroacoustic improvisation and studio-as-instrument post production to explore the inner and outer reaches of each other’s musical vocabularies.

Recorded in spaces including a bedroom overlooking Concert Square, the thumping epicentre of Liverpool nightlife, and pieced together in the home studio they share in a converted embassy, tracks here oscillate between vocal-led ecclesiastical yearning (Transcript, Chilean Miners) and ecstatic assemblages of sound (Beach Mystery, A Raft), always suggesting a palpable sense of geography with an allusive sense of place. Using zither, drum machine, music box, dictaphone, synthesiser and melodica amongst other sonic sources, through the course of the album threads of potential narrative and association circle like the rods of a mobile. ‘First Seance’ elevates deceptively simple materials and means with vivid imagination and bold compositional strategies, transcending the intimate scale of bedroom recording and DIY sound creation. It presents a wholly original set of musical environments, and a compelling document of intuition, friendship and artistic curiosity.

TRACK LISTING

1. Regulate 06:43
2. Beach Mystery 02:45
3. Chilean Miners 05:21
4. Transcript 03:55
5. A Raft 08:23
6. Velarde 03:12
7. First Seance 09:40
8. Yardang 05:04

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).

Record Store Day exclusive's Aphelion Vol.1 and Aphelion Vol.2 bring together a selection of rare remixes from the Rocket Recordings back catalogue - all but one track are being released on vinyl for the first time. The LP's bring together tracks by Rocket favourites like Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, Josefin Ohrn + The Liberation, Sex Swing, Gnoomes, Bonnacons of Doom and many more. These classic Rocket tracks have been pushed, pulled, stretched, dissected and some, completely re-imagined by an eclectic mix of incredible artists. These include some of the current leaders of electronic exploration like Nyege Nyegeís Nihiloxia, Bristolís Giant Swan and Oliver Ho's Broken English Club.

Remixes from the post-punk royalty of IDLES, to the untouchable, experimental sounds of Tomaga - the albums also includes contributions from two of NTS Radio's most acclaimed DJ's, Optimoís JD Twitch and the godlike Cherrystones, both exploring addictive bass churning sounds. The albums also see Rocket artists remixing their fellow label mates - Mexico's J. Zunz unexpected remix of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, GNOD's Negra Branca remix of Greece's Kooba Tercu, and one of the stand out tracks, the 9 min+ Gnoomes remix of the Flowers Must Die song Hey, Shut Up. Aphelion Vol.1 also includes a brand new, unreleased remix by Cage And Aviaryís Jamie Paton and his krautdub take on J. Zunz track Four Women and Darkness.

The results are a cauldron of repetitive sounds across two LPs ñ taking in everything from psych, techno, krautrock, afro, noise, dub and all the other ingredients you would expect to find on a compilation released on the ever reliable Rocket Recordings. Each LP is ltd to 500 copies, with only 420 going to record shops (the other 80 are going to all artists/band members involved).

TRACK LISTING

01/ Gum Takes Tooth - No Walls, No Air (Broken English Club Remix) 02/ Bonnacons Of Doom - Esus (Jd Twitch Optimo Remix) 03/Josefin Ohrn + The Liberation ñ Rainbow Lollipop (Cherrystones Remix) 04/ Petbrick ñ Roadkill Ruby (Spooky J / Nihiloxia Remix) 05/ Mamuthones - Symphony For The Devil (Giant Swan Remix) 06/ J.Zunz - Four Women And Darkness (Jamie Paton Dub) 07/ Kooba Tercu ñ Qasan (Negra Branca Remix)

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).

Record Store Day exclusive's Aphelion Vol.1 and Aphelion Vol.2 bring together a selection of rare remixes from the Rocket Recordings back catalogue - all but one track are being released on vinyl for the first time. The LP's bring together tracks by Rocket favourites like Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, Josefin Ohrn + The Liberation, Sex Swing, Gnoomes, Bonnacons of Doom and many more. These classic Rocket tracks have been pushed, pulled, stretched, dissected and some, completely re-imagined by an eclectic mix of incredible artists. These include some of the current leaders of electronic exploration like Nyege Nyegeís Nihiloxia, Bristolís Giant Swan and Oliver Ho's Broken English Club.

Remixes from the post-punk royalty of IDLES, to the untouchable, experimental sounds of Tomaga - the albums also includes contributions from two of NTS Radio's most acclaimed DJ's, Optimoís JD Twitch and the godlike Cherrystones, both exploring addictive bass churning sounds. The albums also see Rocket artists remixing their fellow label mates - Mexico's J. Zunz unexpected remix of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, GNOD's Negra Branca remix of Greece's Kooba Tercu, and one of the stand out tracks, the 9 min+ Gnoomes remix of the Flowers Must Die song Hey, Shut Up. Aphelion Vol.1 also includes a brand new, unreleased remix by Cage And Aviary's Jamie Paton and his krautdub take on J. Zunz track Four Women and Darkness.

The results are a cauldron of repetitive sounds across two LPs ñ taking in everything from psych, techno, krautrock, afro, noise, dub and all the other ingredients you would expect to find on a compilation released on the ever reliable Rocket Recordings. Each LP is ltd to 500 copies, with only 420 going to record shops (the other 80 are going to all artists/band members involved).

TRACK LISTING

01/ Sex Swing - The Passover (Idles Remix) 02/ Gnoomes - City Monk (Lay Llamas Afro Cosmic Re-Work) 03/ Necro Deathmort - Mono Serum (Tomaga Remix) 04/ Flowers Must Die - Hey, Shut Up (Gnoomes Slo-Mix) 05/ Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - Hellís Teeth (J. Zunz Re-Work) 06/ Mien - Black Habit

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)

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 

“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

Goat return with Commune, the eagerly awaited follow up to their astonishing debut album World Music. Commune continues on with World Music's acidic grooves, hypnotic incantations, and serpentine guitar lines but also introduces a darker, more angry edge to the band, not seen before on previous releases. Starting with the layered percussive groove, Eastern guitar flourishes, and convoking vocals of "Talk To God", it re-establishes the trance-inducing rhythms and exotic blaze of guitar that characterized their debut so well.

That spellbound pulse delves into darker and more propulsive territories on "Words" and "Goatslaves", while "Goatchild" veers towards the transcendental pop of '60s Bay Area rock. The vintage psychedelic vibe permeates through songs like "The Light Within" and "To Travel The Path Unknown" - tracks that suggest that these rural Swedes operate on the same wavelength as the Turkish psych-folkies recently rediscovered by reissue labels like Finders Keepers. Commune reaches its apex when Goat's hymnal invocations meet a heavy doze of proto-metal fuzz on "Hide From The Sun" and "Gathering of Ancient Tribes".

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: Goat, those anonymous citizens of the world, reflect their magpie exoticism in sound and appearance, a blazing array faithful at once to all and no culture in particular. 'World Music' was, then, a completely appropriate, somewhat ironic label for a joyous, free spirited manifesto of universalism that exploded into the world like an asteroid strike, rendering at a stroke much else tired, conservative, and lacking in passion. 'Commune' follows that tradition, but, cradled at either end within the serenity of Buddhist singing bowls, this is a more concise and aggressive ritual, inheriting a strong African influence (specifically Mali this time) but built more around guitar lines, less around rhythm. This is typified by the sublime opening snarl of "Talk To God", insolent vocal chants soaring over a hypnotic guitar spiral. Worth waiting for? ‘Commune’ is at least as good as its incredible predecessor - and that is really some achievement.

TRACK LISTING

01. Talk To God
02. Words
03. The Light Within
04. Travel The Path Unknown
05. Goatchild
06. Goatslaves
07. Hide From The Sun
08. Bondye
09. Gathering Of Ancient Tribes

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

“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

As the year 2020 fast approaches, there still exists a peculiar shortage of music spiritually attuned to these treacherous times. Fortunately Petbrick - the duo comprising Wayne Adams (Big Lad/Death Pedals/Johnny Broke) and Iggor Cavalera Sepultura / Soulwax/ Mixhell) - are exploring fresh lunacy anew whereby electronic experimentation, hardcore attitude, dystopian dread and in-the-red dementia collide and collude to form a uniquely invigorating assault, custom fit for an accelerated age. This debut employs both members’ past experience - Wayne in a variety of musical guises ranging from punk to breakcore and gabba, and Iggor in a planet-straddling metal colossus whose questing spirit played a crucial role in the music’s evolution - yet also cheerfully renders them obsolete in a resolutely genre-free onslaught, damaged by the endtime intensity of Ministry and the synapse-shredding mischief of Aphex Twin yet lodged firmly in the here and now. Moreover, guest vocalists are also on hand to traverse anywhere from full-throttle intensity (as with Full Of Hell’s Dylan Walker on the blistering ‘Radiation Facial’ or Integrity’s legendary vocal exorcist Dwid Hellion on ‘Some Semblance Of A Story’) to exhilarating melodic counterpoint (Laima Leyton (Mixhell) on ‘Coming’) and stream-of-consciousness lunacy from Warmduscher’s Mutado Pintado, whose splenetic tirades on ‘Gringolicker’. Paint-stripping and deliriously potent, ‘I’ is more than merely an exercise in the life-affirming flame of oppositional punk spirit scorching all or any musical boundaries in its path - it’s an uncompromising soundtrack to a short-circuiting new era. Yet rarely has the sound of global malfunction also been so much fun

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It had to be on Rocket Recordings this, didn't it? Crushing blast beats, unholy distorted noise and resonant synths squealing all over the place, interspersed with moments of lucidity before breaking down into unbridled, beautiful chaos once again. Unhinged, brilliant madness.

TRACK LISTING

01 Horse
02. Radiation Facial (Feat. Dylan Walker)
03. Guacamole Handshake
04. Roadkill Ruby
05. Sect
06. Gringolicker (Feat. Mutado Pintado)
07. Coming (Feat. Laima Leyton)
08. Jesus Dropkick
09. Some Semblance Of A Story (Feat. Dwid Hellion)
10. Dr Blair

‘In The Silence Electric’, the latest record in Julie’s Haircut’s long history of sonic otherworldliness is notable for its deft balance between hypnotic radiance and extrasensory intensity, between beatific calm and palpable anger. Yet it’s also a record which has arrived through a strange process of osmosis from a band confident enough to let subconscious and metaphysical aspects steer them in the appropriate directions. “We embraced the incidents, letting the songs guide us to their final form rather than trying to force them in a precise direction” confirms the band’s Luca Giovanardi.

For all its divings, this is a collection of supremely confident and cohesive ditties that sees the deep-end diabolism and mantric intensity of the Italian-based band’s Rocket debut, 2017’s ‘Invocation And Ritual Dance Of My Demon Twin’ expanded into a righteous fury and incandescent splendour. Whether it’s the heavy-lidded rapture of ‘Lord Help Me Find The Way’ (like Spiritualized transposed to 1970s Berlin), the menacing dream-state of ‘In Return’ or the Suicide-damaged psychic assault that is ‘Sorcerer’, all is subsumed by a bold singularity of intent, amidst a colourful firestorm of electronic monomania, jazz-tinged atonality and indelibly memorable vocal hooks.

“There’s a theme springing from the title of the record and the (cover) photos of Annegret Soltau that deliver some sense of helplessness, suffocation, difficulty in communication” notes the band’s Luca Giovanardi. Yet for all this - and paradoxically enough - ‘In The Silence Electric’ is both this mysterious and rebellious band’s most adventurous and most direct record to date - not to mention an ever more compelling transmission from renowned experts in altered states

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This arresting new LP from Julie's Haircut swims with the hazy psychedelic undercurrent label Rocket Recordings has become known for, having been home to titans Gnod, Josefin Ohrn, Goat etc. While there are definitely similarities in terms of influences, JH have maintained a singular sound and hypnotic otherworldliness, a precise and uncompromising vision, and a refined outcome only they could have produced.

TRACK LISTING

01 Anticipation Of The Night (5:24)
02 Emerald Kiss (6:56)
03 Until The Lights Go Out (4:18)
04 Lord Help Me Find The Way (4:40)
05 Sorcerer (4:17)
06 Darlings Of The Sun (4:02)
07 In Return (3:50)
08 Pharaoh’s Dream (3:40)
09 For The Seven Lakes (4:51)

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

London-based Gum Takes Tooth’s hyper-kinetic and unique approach evolved via drum-triggered electronics, manipulated to achieve a dynamic, rhythmically driven and flagrantly unclassifiable fury that flirts with both speaker-ripping psych-rock pyrotechnics and synapse-shredding  acid house deliverance whilst stubbornly avoiding any of the trappings or clichés of either. ‘Arrow’ - their third album and first for Rocket Recordings, is both a portrait of their home-city in an increasingly alienating age, and a travelogue for an everyday journey involving battles for both time and space - searing and visceral yet suffused by melancholy and elegiac atmosphere. Mapping out a landscape in which the influences of Coil, Warp Records, The Knife and Lightning Bolt are alchemically transformed into an innovative and pulverising onslaught, ‘Arrow’ is also the band’s more intensely personal record yet, dealing as the band’s Jussi Brightmore notes with “Ever more omnipresent and vacuous global tropes cementing economic inequality, nervous amnesia and being as complicit as anyone else in all that” Yet there’s plentiful hope for the future, and never more than on the album’ title-track: “The Arrow’ is so called because it flies in a straight line or arc but it never repeats its structure, or goes back on itself” - and thus, a singularly appropriate metaphor for Gum Takes Tooth themselves. Mavericks to the last, perpetual square-pegs and a band intent on forging onward to break all or any paradigms before them, creating a collection of kinetic anthems to battle everyday oppression - a work of machine-driven mania with its very human heart on its sleeve. 

TRACK LISTING

01 Cold Chrome Hearts (5:11)
02 The Arrow (7:21)
03 No Walls, No Air (7:01)
04 Slowly Falling (3:11)
05 Apogee (0.51)
06 Borrowed Lies (7:59)
07 Dream Circle - Cloud Cycle (1:08)
08 Fights Physiology (5:03)
09 Seizure (1:43)
10 A Still Earth (6:46)
11 House Built Of Fire (8:04)

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

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