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.

Neither inherently good nor evil, the DJINN have been heralded in Arab culture since the Pre-Islamic period, located somewhere on a spiritual plane between humanity and the realm of deities. A mysterious force, their influence - essential between angel and demon - has subsequently extended to mythos, religious belief and folklore far and wide, from the malevolent spirits that originally haunted deserts and inspired poets to the archetypal Western genie in a bottle. Yet also, the DJINN’s name has been interpreted as meaning “beings that are concealed from the senses”. This makes the word a fitting moniker for an album which, despite being shrouded in mystery, manifests an unknowable yet intense spiritual force.

Their first release - also the first ‘proper’ jazz record to see released on Rocket Recordings- is manifested as equal parts hidden and otherworldly influence. Formed by the talented musicians of Swedish bands Hills and GOAT, DJINN foray into numerous quarters on a far-reaching metaphysical quest lasting the course of this record. It’s a psychic travelogue which frequently encompasses full-throttle free jazz - as in the blistering ‘My Bank Account’, with its echoes of the transcendent extrapolations of Albert Ayler, and the more loose ‘Algäbannem’, which nods to the demolition derby that John Coltrane and drummer Rashied Aliengaged in via ‘Interstellar Space’. Yet this is an album of a wild and wilful variety of textures and headspaces - whether entering into astral jazz or new age ambience akin to the later devotional work of Alice Coltrane, as on ‘Le Jardin De La Morte’ ,or entering into Don Cherry-style small-hours auras as on the reflective and hallucinatory thumb-piano-assisted bliss of ‘Fiskehamm Blues’, all excursions into the unknown are marked by potency of delivery and singularity of intent.

Titles such as ‘Djinn and Djuice’ might make the listener suspect that a certain levity is present here, yet such self-deprecating tones are entirely belied by the modus operandi of creators who engage with a rare sensitivity and sensuousness in their playing - nodding to the traditions and stylistics of the records they love whilst using them as a springboard into dimensions unknown. It’s a record made with deftness and restraint where necessary, yet also one unafraid to jump in the deep end in search of rich atmospheres and intoxicating soundscapes. “The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper” - thus once remarked Bertrand Russell, he whose very name is bastardised by DJINN to moniker the drifting, hallucinatory ‘Rertland Bussels’. A mighty array of such things on offer within these eight tracks, amidst a soundworld that any intrepid psychic explorer should be delighted to sharpen their wits for.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited indies-only 'Ice' coloured vinyl.

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

Barry says: We love Josefin Ohrn here at Piccadilly, and (for me certainly), every album is moving more into my remit. The mind-melting psychedelic edge is still present in abundance, but this one moves slightly more towards a rhythmic synth-poppy affair interspersed with huge thumping arpeggios and sidechains aplenty amongst the usual hazy saturated psych. Superb stuff.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Orange vinyl.

Indies Exclusive LP Info: Deep Blue/Black Swirl Vinyl - UK Indies Only.

“The mantra that you’re given in Transcendental Meditation you keep to yourself. The reason being, true happiness is not out there, true happiness lies within” - so states David Lynch, a vocal proponent of this art on a twice-daily basis since 1973. It’s a maxim that holds true to Sweden’s Centrum, whose Rocket Recordings debut forms no less than a mysterious yet meaningful voyage into inner space. Indeed, on ‘För Meditation’ these sometime members of Hills and Weary Nous explore a soundworld that demonstrates all too adeptly that true heaviness of intent need not be the preserve of demonic riffs and highly cranked amps.

Weaving a dense and beguiling tapestry of drone-based hypnosis, mantric vocal chants and ritualistic folk along with field recordings from a trip the members made to India, this band also inadvertently plots our a map from the experimental music of the early-‘70s to the present, alighting on a myriad touchstones on the way. Yet tempting through it may be to place ‘För Meditation’ amidst the uniquely Swedish lineage of primal and arcadian Psychedelia that began with artists like Arbete Och Fritid, Träd, Gras och Stenar and International Harvester, the band are keen to emphasise that inspiration arrives at Centrum from all quarters. “From Pandit Pran Nath to Trees, from Velvet Underground to Popol Vuh, anything and everything. So lay down relax, turn off your phone and let Centrum be your guide! 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited red vinyl LP.

Paisiel is the enigmatic name given to this very special project that features the exceptional talents of Portuguese drummer / percussionist and sonic sculptor João Pais Filipe and the German saxophonist Julius Gabriel. Based on an individual exploration of the sound and on the expressive possibilities of their instruments, the duo’s music seeks to join and systematize their influences, albeit without any obvious correspondences or affinities – resulting in textures and abstract melodies propelled by a mechanical and existential percussion that morphs into a kinetic trance. Heterodox and digressive musicians, they move freely between the repetition of krautrock and techno, jazz, experimental music and other new musical categories, João Pais Filipe and Julius Gabriel create radio-graphic sounds that inhabits somewhere between the reception and the emission of a signal, like a cosmic telephone exchange.

This three track album was originally released in 2018 as a ltd edition cassette on the great Portuguese label Lovers & Lollypops. And now Rocket Recordings are extremely proud to be releasing this unique recording on a ltd edition colour vinyl and across all digital channels. In 2018 João Pais Filipe has also found the time to release a stunning and highly acclaimed solo album and a very exciting collaboration with fellow drummer/percussionist, and also very talented Valentina Magaletti (Tomaga/Vanishing Twin/UUUU) called CZN. Paisiel have already wowed audiences across stages in Europe including a jaw dropping set at the eclectic and well respected Milhões de Festa. Now the duo have plans to head to the UK to play a series of shows in support of this release. 

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. 

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.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies exclusive pink/black swirl edition.

LP Info: Black vinyl edition.

THE PICCADILLY RECORDS ALBUM OF THE YEAR 2012

For those who are unaware, Goat are a collective of musicians who hail from a small and very remote village called Korpolombolo in deepest darkest Sweden.

Legend has it that for centuries, the inhabitants of the village of Korpolombolo were dedicated to the worship and practices of Voodoo. This strange and seemingly unlikely activity was apparently introduced into the area after a travelling witch doctor and a handful of her disciples were led to Korpolombolo by following a cipher hidden within their most sacred of ancient scriptures. The reason it led them there is unknown, but their Voodoo influence quickly took hold over the whole village and so they made it their home - there, they were able to practice their craft unnoticed and unbothered for several centuries.

This was until their non-Christian ways were discovered by the Church and they were burned out by the crusaders, the survivors cursing the village over their shoulders as they fled. To this day, the now picturesque village of Korpolombolo is still haunted by this Voodoo curse; the power of the curse can be felt throughout the grooves of this Goat record.

The nine track album follows the underground success of the now sought after 7” Goatman, which is also included in this selection. The band takes in many influences, from the Afro groove that is central to the album, through to head nodding psych, post-punk, turkish rock, kraut repetition and astral folk.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Back in February 2012 we stocked an intriguing 7” called “Goatman” from a mysterious Swedish group called Goat, we loved its wacked out voodoo psych and judging by sales so did our customers, but little did it prepare us for the amazing debut album that followed seven months later under a shroud of myth and mystery.

The story surrounding the group is becoming the stuff of mystical legend; Goat, according to their press release, are from a remote village called Korpolombolo in deepest darkest Sweden, the tale of the place being that the inhabitants were dedicated to the worship and practices of Voodoo after a travelling witch doctor stayed there a few centuries ago. The band itself is believed to be a collective of local musicians who have been recording music under the name of Goat for the past 30 or 40 years, this being the first incarnation of the group that’s ever released anything for the outside world to share. Of course whether this epic fantasy tale is true remains debatable, but in reality it really doesn’t matter when their musical output is this good.

After the debut 7” we naturally expected “World Music” to be an album full of heavy psychedelic mantras, but what we got was something more mind-blowing - a loose melting pot of afro-voodoo-beat rhythms, blistering psyche guitar freakouts, kosmische drenched metronomy, and post-punk funkiness. It’s at times poppy and accessible (the 3 minute “Run To Your Mama” could grace the top of the charts in any other parallel universe) and at other times raw with an underground swagger, but what really hits you full-on is the spontaneous energy and sassy fun of the album. Think Funkadelic meets Spacemen 3 meets Fela Kuti meets Can meets ESG. It’s an album that’s done pretty much the impossible and united all tastes behind the counter here at Piccadilly, we all absolutely love it, and so will you!

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP Info: Repress in a die-cut sleeve.

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.

VED are another amazing Swedish band you have probably never heard of. With 3 albums, 2 EPs and a compilation on labels like Höga Nord and Adrian Recordings already behind them, VED are the latest Swedish band, following on from Goat, Josefin Öhrn, Hills and Flowers Must Die to release their exploratory music on Rocket Recordings. The Malmö 5 piece are famed for creating trance inducing, repetitive, psych. Their ever evolving sound has always taken in many global influences, from Middle Eastern to African to the repetitive explorations of composers like Steve Reich and Terry Riley. DDTT is a two track EP that at it’s core is exploring the art of repetition, with each track surpassing the 12 minute mark.

The song DDTT itself is centered around a series of monotonous African rock sounding drum patterns, plucked guitar riffs that overlap at varying speeds, all building to an intoxicating sound that juxtaposes itself as well as locking into a tight groove. As the track builds, layer upon layer of bowed cymbals collide with tight percussion and a minimalist bass line straight out of Holger Czukay’s handbook. Sheets of bowed drones reminiscent of Tony Conrad are at the core of second track Det långa straffet. The ritual looping of fluttering live drums, palpitating bass, trace and retrace repetitively within the carousel of grooves. Climaxing are sound rousing heavy horns, the whole piece gratifyingly serves as a brute force repetitive handprint of human intent. DDTT is an EP for the fans of the new Polish scene and the constantly excellent Instant Classic Records, and the minimal electronica explorations by Chicago acts like Joshua Abrams and Bitchin Bajas

Whether congregating in dimly lit halls or in forests, and whether mediated by e-mailed audiofiles or infiltrating darker realms of consciousness, mysterious forces are being channelled by a shifting collective intent on psychic communion by any means necessary. Bonnacons of Doom’s identities may be shrouded and hidden in the live arena, yet the force of their vibrations - as captured on the unearthly vibrations and unholy revelations of their self-titled Rocket Recordings debut - is gloriously manifest. “From the beginning, we’ve been really interested in the transformative possibilities of music” explains Rob, one such Bonnacon. “How it has the power to make us and the audience at that particular moment into something else. In particular, we’ve tried to work with repetition, volume and texture rather than traditional song structures. Anything that produces a stasis that people can get lost in rather than following something in a linear or obvious way”  Whilst the line-up of Bonnacons of Doom has been known to morph with each undertaking, the prime movers in the principally Liverpoolbased collective endeavour have included members of Mugstar, Jarvis Cocker’s band and Youthmovies, donning robes and masks to sculpt altered states and subsume themselves to the ritual.

Recording mostly in single-takes and in the band’s trademark improvisational method at Suburban Home studios by its owner and Hookworms frontman MJ, this recorded incarnation of Bonnacons’ arcane conjury operates stubbornly free of genre, sashaying alongside psych-rock, repetitive drone and electronic experimentation whilst consumed by a devotional intensity that’s multiplied by the transcendental echoing of vocalist Kate. “I guess our environment is another key influence” reckons Rob. “We’re almost all from Lancashire and Yorkshire, and the landscape and mythology of the north is part of who we are. It’s darkness and beauty, the weirdness of its folk traditions, the independence of mind of its culture and the melancholy of its post-industrial grain. I think ultimately what we’re trying to achieve is a kind of Trans-Pennine hypnotic music.”

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP Info: LP In Die Cut Sleeve

Chapel Perilous exists whereby the supernatural converges with the everyday - whatever one’s definition of reality, this psychological realm serves to prove it endlessly subjective and changeable. Robert Anton Wilson may have laid claim to the modern use of this phrase - as in his 1977 tome ‘Cosmic Trigger’ - yet there can be few musical outfits in the here and now more worthy of carrying on its tradition than Gnod. In more than a decade on the planet this singular Salford-birthed entity have married intrepid musical exploration with psychic fearlessness - not to mention a tendency to leave any tag or bracket one attempts to place on them utterly redundant. In a sense, the latest adventure bearing this title evolved both from the lengthy European tour that the band embarked upon in the wake of their stripped-down and paint-stripping 2017 opus Just Say No The Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine.

Yet recording in Supernova studio in Eindhoven under the auspices of Bob De Wit, the band found themselves free not only to lay down two tumultuous tracks that they had been honing and hammering into shape on the road - the pulverising fifteen-minute opener ‘Donovan’s Daughters’ and the bracingly brutal ‘Uncle Frank Says Turn It Down’ - but to sculpt more abstract material, utilising dubbed-out repetition, furious riff-driven rancour, bleak soundscapes and off-the-map experimentation to create an intimidating and invigorating tableau of dystopian dread and unflinching intensity. Always working purely on their own instincts and co-ordinates, Gnod’s pathway into unchartered territory continues to move firmly on with nary a care for the sanity of anyone in their surroundings. Chapel Perilous is a still more indomitable chapter in a transcendental travelogue from an iconoclastic institution that only gathers momentum with the passing of time. Wherever Gnod go in 2018 and beyond, expect reality to be reinvented anew, whatever the consequences

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Splatter coloured vinyl repress.

Debut album by MIEN, the exciting new four piece band comprised of The Black Angels’ Alex Maas, The Horrors’ Tom Furse, Elephant Stone’s Rishi Dhir and The Earlies’ John-Mark Lapham. The seeds were sown for this collaboration as long ago as 2004, when Rishi Dhir (Elephant Stone) found himself in a chance encounter with Black Angels frontman Alex Maas whilst performing sitar with his former band on a bill at SXSW in Austin with The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Not long afterwards, he would also stumble across electronics guru and producer John Mark Lapham from Anglo-American band The Earlies, via a shared love for one song - the ‘classic sitar banger’ by The Association, ‘Wantin’ Ain’t Gettin’.

Some years later, another piece of the puzzle came into place, when Dhir was now playing bass with The Black Angels in 2012, and found the band sharing several bills with The Horrors. Thus he made the acquaintance of Tom Furse, and yet another pact was made to work together. Several traversals of the globe by both plane and audio-file later, the result is an album that sees this quartet transcending their origins whilst maintaining a cohesive unity borne of a desire for outward exploration.

John Mark’s vision, as he puts it, was “imagine the Black Angels as Nico in her 80’s industrial phase mixed with George Harrison and Conny Plank.” - true to form, it’s an album that finds equal room for radiant groove-based propulsion and ambient dreamscapes alike - as comfortable with the murky hallucinogenic voyage of ‘You Dreamt’ as the powerful widescreen sweep of ‘(I’m Tired Of) Western Shouting’, yet with songwriting acumen as potent as the production values are expansive and exploratory. This may have been a record put together at a distance - yet the chemistry between these four figures is manifest amidst a kaleidoscopic series of atmospheres and excursions whereby the fertile songwriting of the golden age of ‘60s psychedelia is transmitted into a transcendental realm above and beyond the second decade of the 21st century. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It would be impossible to imagine a better line-up than these four veterans of psych and indie-rock, and the product of their hard work is every bit as brilliant as you'd imagine. Fuzzy-headed psychedelic swirls, thumping percussion and chugging, kosmische riffs.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: "Deep Mien" coloured vinyl.

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

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

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

STAFF COMMENTS

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

When the masked Swedish collective Goat toured Europe in the Autumn of 2016 to promote their then recently released third album Requiem - the band came up with the idea to record every show. On returning back to their home town of Korpilombolo, Goat painstakingly went through all the recordings and have to picked out 6 tracks to be released on for limited live album Fuzzed in Europe.

Goat picked these 6 tracks in particular as they are different versions to what is found on the releases the songs originally came from and the band liked the idea that these versions are documented onto vinyl. Goat’s live reputation is second to none – since their first public shows in 2012 they have stunned audiences across the globe. The bands brand of dancable, tribal psychedelia is guaranteed to create mass hysteria from the wanting crowds – Goat know how to create music that is made for the ‘head’ as well as the ‘body’.

There are rumours of Goat disappearing into the hills – that they have hung up their masks now for good and have slipped away as quietly as they arrived on to the scene. Whether this is true or not, we don’t know, but even if they have or have not disbanded from public view, this is a great document of their immersive power to cherish, it celebrates band completely at the top of their game. The eye popping beautiful artwork for Fuzzed in Europe was created by the great poster artist Adam Pobiak – who has worked with everyone from Soundgarden to the Justice and Swans to Flaming Lips.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There's not a goat release goes by without me learning of a new 'Colour' to press vinyl on. This particular one is no different, I've never seen the flavours of an after eight represented in vinyl colour (minty green, chocolatey brown) before, but here it is. Why mention the music? You know it's insanely good, and you get the beautiful design to go along with it. A++

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indie stores only green/black splatter vinyl. Limited to just 2000 copies worldwide.

Despite almost all bands being prone to painting themselves as frontier-hurdling mavericks who provoke extreme reactions in their audience, the fact is that the vast majority of them of them wont produce little more than bland indifference or benign acceptance in whichever audience they come into contact with, Not so Housewives, the London-based outfit whose psychic charge- equal parts brittle rhythmic drive, angular contortions and monochrome minimalism - is as punishing in approach as the band are enigmatic in aspect.

‘FF061116’, which follows in the wake of their debut ‘Work’ (released on Hands in The Dark) and previous tapes and 7” releases (on Faux Discs and Blank Editions), the band shows no sign of compromise whatsoever, being as stark, harsh and stubbornly inhospitable as the strobe-haunted, feverishly kinetic live shows that have earned them a fearsome reputation beyond the rumoured West country of their origins or the urban environs of their adopted home. Split into seven excerpts and built on powerful repetition, it’s a mind-melding travail into abstraction and abjection which draws on post-punk, jazz, drone, electronic and avant-garde tropes to create an unclassifiable assault that feels oddly timeless - innovative, invigorating and bare-boned yet tapping into a uniquely English lineage that extends back to the 1970s and forward, into the unknown.

Nonetheless, whilst some may be able to detect influences like This Heat (whose Charles Hayward approvingly described their sound as redolent of “a barely controlled anger, hypnotic and building from the simplest elements”) or Einsturzende Neubauten, Housewives are carving out their own unique place in the darker quarters of the underground, motivated by a fearsome intensity of conviction and a fearlessly experimental approach. ‘FF061116’ is the latest in a series of transmissions from a collective mindset whose manifestations are as richly rewarding as they are relentlessly intense. Wherever they go from this aural outpost, all intrepid avant adventurers would do well to buckle in for the ride.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Clanging dissonance, slamming lo-fi drums and otherworldly sonic squeals. Filled with attitude, and raw unadulterated power, but delicately accentuated with jazzy flourishes and a plethora of aural curveballs.

Hey Colossus have undergone a spectacular metamorphosis in the last three years - the 2015 Rocket Recordings double-drop of ‘In Black And Gold’ and ‘Radio Static High’ displayed not only a band with a work rate to put most all their contemporaries to shame, but one arriving at an atmospheric and rewarding sound with as much flair for the beguiling as the barbaric. Changes may have been afoot in the Hey Colossus camp, yet their latest transmission ‘The Guillotine’ marks another peak for an innovative force in the realm of heavy amplification. Darker and more brooding than their recent work, it’s also perhaps their most richly melodic to date - the interplay of their three guitar lineup has never sounded more fluent than on these eight songs, nor their songcraft more well-defined.

This is a record whose alchemical charge arrives from a reinvention of loud rock shapes into forms both feral and fresh - whilst Hey Colossus can still bludgeon with overamped vigour, as on the hypnotic and devastating krautrock-Jesus-Lizard hybrid of ‘Back In The Room’ they can also deliver the dusky and haunting waltz-time serenade of ‘Calenture Boy’ with uncompromising fortitude, with the new-found confidence and allure of Paul Sykes’ vocals at the forefront. These menacing and immersive songs chronicle a band exploring a unique sound and invigorating approach in a decade in which cliches and genre pieces in the realm of the psychedelic have frequently surrounded - here the six-piece find themselves transcending the limitations of the underground scene from whence they came, whilst exposing the paucity of inspiration in much of the guitar-rock mainstream. Hey Colossus are at their sharpest, and none will survive ‘The Guillotine’. 

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2017 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

Goat release an unreleased edit of the track Goatfuzz – one of the stand out tracks off their latest album 'Requiem' as a special ltd edition 7" for Record Store Day. The Bside of the 7" is a brand new track, entitled Goatfizz which once again shows another side to the bands take on 'world music'. The 2 colour 'splatter vinyl' 7" is ltd to 2,000 copies and will only be available on Record Store Day – these tracks will not be made available on digital formats.

Ask many self-styled music aficionados, and they’ll tell you that rock in the early to mid ‘70s descended into a mire of boundless self-indulgence and instrumental virtuosity. Not so in Sweden. For there, the egalitarian spirit that many thought revolutionary to punks in the UK was nothing new for the heads to be found enjoying the cult Swedish psychedelia of bands like Träd, Gräs och Stenar or Älgarnas Trädgård.

It’s exactly this lineage forty plus years later where one can find Flowers Must Die, the six-piece Swedish outfit whose ‘Kompost’ - their full-length debut on Rocket Recordings, home of Goat and Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation - is a landmark moment for an outfit pursuing an improvisation based approach removed from the codified realm of contemporary psych, and exploring uncanny and unhinged territory fuelled by diverse record collections yet unique to their own collective headspace. The band may have taken their name originally from an Ash Ra Tempel song, whilst both the strains of Amon Düül II and the repetition of Can lurk within these overgrown sonic pathways.

Yet ‘Kompost’ shows them honing their improvisatory excursions into coherent songcraft amidst spectral techno and cosmic disco shapes, as the angular post-punk pop of The Sugarcubes sits alongside the narcotic clangour of prime Royal Trux, and one-take spontaneity locks horns with nocturnal revelation. Here the outward-looking spirit of 1971 and the anything-goes mentality of the Scandinavian freaks of yore is transposed elegantly to a modern era in need of new horizons, and in a manner refreshingly bereft of retro chic. What’s more, who’s to say what dimensions this alchemical force have yet to explore.

Considering the current political climate, Gnod's newest outing was never going to be a particularly cheery affair. 'Just Say No To The Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine' is indeed political, it is wrought and angry, and it installs everything you would expect from a Gnod album, and adds to it exponentially. 'Bodies For Money' sets out as a state of intent from the off with a screaming pillar of feedback before launching headfirst into a barrage of percussion and punishing guitar. Settling slightly to leave sonic headroom for an angry muted voice is as symbolic as it is effective, giving the impression of fighting against the tide of noise and crushing weight of the background. 

'People' begins much more unceremonoiusly, pitching a looped vocal abstraction against rich and guttoral bass guitar and driving percussion. More akin to the aggressive Krautrock of their earlier years, but injected with a satisfying grit and industrious drive. The vocal segments are layered and amplified, giving the impression of a growing force speaking towards one end. This is music for protest, a soundtrack for forced disillusionment, a call to arms and it is as rousing as it is brilliant. 

The clanging of 'Paper Error' quickly becomes one of the more melodic points on the album, eschewing vocal snippets and ambient swells for a deft stoner-rock passage, before twisting and tunring into a rawkous and molten grinding thump. It's towering conclusion is inched upon you, like a frog boiling in water without jumping out. 

'Real Man' is rich in thunderous sub-bass, and propelled by galloping drums and a snarling monologue half-sung about our hero, the man in a dirty grey suit with a bag full of beers. Claging old-school punk littered with instrumental passages and cataclysmic breakdowns, screaming and feedback twisted and rolled into a voracious wall of noise and force. 

The epic closer 'Stick In The Wheel' grows from a vocal refusal of convention, accompanied by rhythmic guitar stabs and dark-ambient synth work, the constantly propulsive and militaristic rhythm perfectly befits the conventions of the previous numbers, acting as an anchor for the political tumult that preceeds it, before breaking down into a psychedelic and metallic distillation of rage into an eastern-tinged opium den percussive head-nodder. 

A driven and direct assault on the troubles of today, and a bold, bracing barrage of musical magma. Caustic, loud and captivating to the end. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Brilliance as ever from Manchester noise-rock-drone-psych stalwarts Gnod. Brilliantly musical, stunningly direct and absolutely unmissable.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Black with Red Stripe repress.

In a culture obsessed with content, saturation, and continual exposure, it’s rare to find artists who prefer to lurk outside of the public eye. Thomas Pynchon is perhaps the most notable contemporary recluse—a virtually faceless figure who occasionally creeps out of hiding to offer up an elaborate novel steeped in history and warped by imagination—but for crate diggers and guitar mystics, Sweden’s enigmatic GOAT may qualify as the greatest modern pop-culture mystery. Who are these masked musicians? Are they truly members of the Arctic community of Korpilombolo? Are their songs part of their isolated communal heritage? Their third studio album, Requiem, offers more questions than answers, but much like any of Pynchon’s knotty yarns, the reward is not in the untangling but in the journey through the labyrinth.

Western exports may have dominated the consciousness of international rock fans for the entirety of the 20th century, but our increasing global awareness has unearthed a treasure trove of transcendental grooves and spellbinding riffage from exotic and remote corners of the planet. GOAT’s previous albums World Music and Commune were perfect testaments to this heightened awareness, with Silk Road psychedelia, desert blues, and Third World pop all serving as governing forces within the band’s sound. But GOAT’s strange amalgam isn’t some cheap game of cultural appropriation—it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint the exact origins of the elusive group’s sound. The fact that they pledge allegiance to a spot on the periphery of our maps bolsters the nomadic quality of their sonic explorations. With Requiem, GOAT continue to rock and writhe to a beat beholden to no nation, no state.

GOAT’s only outright declaration for Requiem is that it is their “folk” album, and the album is focused more on their subdued bucolic ritualism than psilocybin freakouts. But GOAT hasn’t completely foregone their fiery charms—tracks like “All-Seeing Eye” and “Goatfuzz” conjure the sultry heathen pulsations that ensnared us on their previous albums.

Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of Requiem comes with the closing track “Ubuntu”. The song is little more than a melodic delay-driven electric piano line, until we hear the refrain from “Diarabi”—the first song on their first album—sneak into the mix. It creates a kind of musical ouroboros—an infinite cycle of reflection and rejuvenation, death and rebirth. Much like fellow recluse Pynchon, rather than offering explanations for their strange trajectories, GOAT create a world where the line between truth and fiction is so obscured that all you can do is bask in their cryptic genius.

FORMAT INFORMATION

2xColoured LP Info: **** LAST COPY EVER ****
Ultra limited "psych" yellow/red coloured vinyl edition.

2xIndies Exclusive LP Info: Indie store exclusive orange double vinyl.

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.

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.

Gnod’s Chaudelande Vol 1 & 2 vinyl only albums on Tamed Records (tamedrecords.com) have become a thing of infamy as two of the greatest slabs of beat driven, shamanistic space noise to of been released over the past few years and we at Rocket Recordings are proud to announce that we have brought these two mammoth LPs together for the first time on CD and download.

The collective that is Gnod has risen out of the DIY ethic of Manchester’s Islington Mill. Central to the ethic is alternative approach to musical creativity and freedom of expression with no regard to established opinions. Gnod is a state of mind. Those who seek Gnod, will find Gnod, the universe is centred on neither the earth nor the sun. It is centred on Gnod.Recorded in Studio Chaudelande, France, ‘Chaudelande’ takes Gnod’s convulsive vision, straps on electrodes, charges the amps, then overstimulates the vital organs as a torrent of contorted sounds akin to the likes of Pil, Hawkwind, and the Butthole Surfers lignite like an arc-flash repetitive blaze.

The epic pilgrimage that is Chaudelande will take the listener on a ride through the narrow chinks of the cavernous mind in the frenzied spirit of This Heat, Sunburned Hand of Man and the repetitive beats of Krautrock via Wax Trax.So come join the cult that is Gnod’s ‘Chaudelande’ as once again the band deliver another jolt to the unsound mind..