The Minus Touch
New studio album with eye popping artwork by Jesse Peper in a custom made gatefold case. "V1 or V2"?Someone let loose the china doll from the cupboard again. Simply put, “The Minus Touch” is double plus good. A fantastic place for any LPD/Ka-Spel beginner to start and obviously, an essential for the Old Guard. Ka-Spel's synthedelic song cycle has a flavour reminiscent of other aeons, though Edward's manner of time travel seems to be to wreck himself before he Chyekks himself. Torch is only…
La Maieutique De La Quantique
All new Ilitch studio recording! An horrific grandchild springs from the magma: Ilitch'll itch your progadelic scratch with its well manicured talons of fire. This Ilitchian renaissance zigs deep space experimental and zags full metal Zuehl. Electronics chirp and howl like the opening coda of Susperia, then explode into Weidorje intensity fuzz violence, cheered on by a pecussive force that sounds like Mussolini being kicked to death. The shifting interplay between total rockers and extrat…
Friday Group
From out of the Great Republic of Texas, and a new side project from Tom Carter (Charalambides) and Brian Smith (Iron Kite) rises a lone star called Friday Group. In a seemingly appropriate gesture, the opening scherzo of droney solo guitar twang blows dusty debris across the speakers, as if a small sand storm in a remote part of Amarillo. With wind wrestling loose gutters and flat chimes, the first movement is almost a weird paean to Ry Cooder's desolate Paris Texas score. Axe attacks ho…
Caste O' Graye Skreeens
The bulk of Caste O Graye Skreeëns comprises the expansive 'Our Captain's Eyes', based around a loose unstructured style where Edward Ka-Spel, frontman of the Legendary Pink Dots, lets his imagination run a playful course dropping in everything from ambient soundscapes, drum machines, dance beats, distorted noises and fragmented voices. Ka-Spel's delivers his cryptic lyrics in his idiosyncratic sing - speak style, and via jaunty shanties over French horn. All points of Ka-Spel's prolific musical…
Chyekk, China Doll
With two added bonus tracks. "With the help of Nurse With Wound mainman Steven Stapleton on "tapes, piano, and inspiration," Ka-Spel collaborated with multi-instrumentalist Patrick Wright on Chyekk China Doll, a worthy entry in Ka-Spel's lengthy, involved series of solo works. As with most of his solo work, the artist moves sideways from the collapsing, queasy anarchy of the Legendary Pink Dots for a quieter but no less freaky combination. Wright plays a core role throughout, cowriting ne…
Book Of Nods
A new landscape is painted out of darkness by progressive strokes of the dawn. The finished piece is neither night nor day, but the transformation itself. Aidan Baker's (Nadja) "Book Of Nods" crests experimental peaks in similarly paced sonic transmigrations. His lustrous chimera blooms open in shifting onion layers built out of slow-moaning guitar, flute, organ and drums. The resonant frequencies of quietly crashing nodes vibrate the ozone with a sub-textural beating of multi-pianic fea…
Unraveling Designs
Edition of 110 copies, vinyl only, one time pressing with download card. “Whereas most other music squabbles for your attention whilst it plays, Unraveling Designs is content to remain in your subconscious mind, gently seducing you in an unhurried manner. The steady swelling of opener Recognition is a welcoming crescendo of highly atmospheric textures, seguing perfectly into the bubbling Down From The Sea, which is certainly one of the most carefully conceived and expertly executed number…
Document For The Future
LP edition of 100 numbered copies in hand painted/sprayed/mutilated jackets with insert and download code with copies from BlRR signed. Stimulus return from another long silence with their first release since 2008 and their first non-improvised release in the best part of 10 years! "Document for the Future" is a 6 track album of all new music and is a partial return to the earlier beat driven sound but with the added twist of vocals on all but the first track, resulting in a radical new s…
Tebe
La Piramide di Sangue is a seven piece band from Turin who play a middle-eastern influenced psychedelic rock. The project started with the first solo cassette from member Gianni Giublena Rosacroce (clarinet, percussions), a mixture of middle eastern melodies, mediterranean folklore and spiced teas. The thing soon became a full band including members of Movie Star Junkies, Love Boat and King Suffy Generator, with two guitars, two basses, percussions and synths. Thousands of perfumed riv…
How To Increase Light In The Ear
While the previous Chasm Achanés was based on low and rumbling frequencies, Maggiore and Brasini research is now focused on high pitched waves, through which they create a continuous movement of overtones and resonances. Tiny mechanical cracks are heard through the frequency bliss of the first track, a last resemblance of humanity into this otherwordly atmosphere.The second track has a continuous click, almost a clock, hidden under the microtones of three different frequencies which create an…
I Luv Abortion / In The Flood With The Flood
A picture disc featuring artwork by David Horowitz and music from Xiu Xiu and Father Murphy. You get Xiu Xiu's "I Luv Abortion," backed with Father Murphy's "In the Flood With the Flood."
Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads
Dustin Wong's second LP Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads, is a departure from Dustin's previous methods but more closely a distillation of his live show into recorded form. The pieces are so intricate and detailed that we've asked Dustin to explain his process and he happily obliges us: "When I begin to explore and to build a song through a series of pedals, I begin with the tuner. It helps keep my guitar's pitch consistent. An octave pedal and the distortion pedals allows me to …
Heaven's Youth (Reptilians Demos)
Starfucker’s highly regarded full-length LP Reptilians was originally titled “Heaven’s Youth”. Like most artists, song ideas, the album concept and even the artwork continued to evolve. The band changed the title, continued to edit and develop the songs until the final version (Reptilians) was released in 2011. The original versions of the songs, that were until now only heard by the band, are being released for the first time in a very limited edition of white vinyl. Heaven’s Youth (Re…
Infinite Love
Dustin Wong, like many of us, dove into the world of music and art as an unhappy youth looking to rebel against certain ideals and "absolute truths" that contrasted his own beliefs. A twisting path of punk discovery and a growing respect for sonic visionaries like Jimi Hendrix, Brian Wilson, John Fahey, and Brian Eno led Dustin to further pursue his muse. He eventually wound up at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he met and co-founded the critically acclaimed band Ponytail. …
Lucifer
Textural and whimsical, Lucifer is the latest effort by Peaking Lights couple in love, Indra Dunis and Aaron Coyes. Dunis enjoyed earlier success as a vocalist for Numbers, while wild child Coyes bounced between bands throughout the ’90s and early 2000s, always infusing his musical creations with spontaneity and psychedelia to spare. As he states in a piece for Domino Records: “I…went on a massive stone haze mushroom-induced tour-of-the-mind journey. I think the operative word is haze.”
Aft…
Alice
Limited, hand-numbered edition of 500 green vinyls housed in lavish die-cut and foil-block embossed jacket** Alexander Tucker (Imbogodom/Guapo) and Daniel O'Sullivan (Æthenor/Ulver/Guapo) reprise their Grumbling Fur alias for the Latitudes series following that excellent album for Aurora Borealis in 2011. Both artists have previously graced the series already - Tucker solo and with Ginnugagap, and O'Sullivan with Miasma And The Carousel Of Headless Horses - and don't disappoint with their…
Foam Fangs
West Coast synth guru Jonas Reinhardt (aka Jesse Reiner) makes his 100% Silk debut with 'Foam Fangs', which sees the usually downtempo producer pushing things up a couple of notches. The cosmic Jarre-esque synthesizer washes are still present, but are bolstered with chest-punching 4/4 rhythms and rubbery looping sequences straight out of the 1987 house rulebook. Somehow this gives the EP the glow of Detroit-era pioneer Juan Atkins and muddles it with the Italo-laced fuzz of Johnny Jewel. …
Human Fly
Another curveball from the Not Not Fun camp, 'Human Fly' pits Wolf Eyes noisenik Nate Young against veteran garage punk drummer Dave Shettler and while their collaborative moniker might be a little zany, their brand of dancefloor-ready industrial/techno variations is tough to ignore. Veering from hazy EBM-flecked speed garage (we're not kidding, take a listen) on the title track to Chicago bleep on the zonked 'Cyber Rebels' there's a sense that Young and Shettler are not only well studied…
Will Happiness Find Me
If Ariel Pink takes rock music history and trash-compacts it to suit his needs, then Estonian ex-pat Maria Minerva does the same with dance music. Her narcotic-laced brand of electronic music was showcased perfectly on last year's breakthrough 'Cabaret Cixous', an album which not only put a spotlight on Minerva but also the Not Not Fun imprint itself. 'Will Happiness Find Me' is that record's followup and thankfully Minerva avoids and of the usual pitfalls simply by not overthinking the c…
Quanta Of Light
Limited, hand-stamped white label edition** Highly disciplined master of visceral intensity, Daniel Menche, presents a one-off album for Touch's great white label series. Daniel's work is gladly accepted by both noise and more "musical" spheres, releasing on a wealth of labels including Important Records, Editions Mego and Sub Rosa among many others. Taken as a whole, they capture and play with a timeless sense of drama and direct emotional rawness that's hard to ignore. For Touch, 'Quant…