Rock /
A World Out Of Time
Both words in Eternal Tapestry's name say something about their music, but it's the first that's key. This Portland band's expansive psych rock sounds like it could go on forever, and most of their releases have in fact been culled from longer, open-ended improvisations. The way they slowly build these jams-- adding parts, increasing volume, and cresting in unison-- you get the feeling they're always playing, and their records are just glimpses of an endless stream.For A World Out of Time, Etern…
Wild Songs
2012 release ** "Estasy is the project of Emiliano Maggi, an Italian singer/songwriter who has spent the last couple of years releasing low-key CD-Rs and collaborating with artists and filmmakers in Rome. A lot of the time his live performances with other artists, well-documented on YouTube, are set to spooky visuals, and in those that aren't Maggi wears quite frightening masks. Sure, quite a bit of that does sound like the sort of standard gimmickry rife in 2012, but there's something about Emi…
Go Easy
An uncanny channeling of Missing-Links-styled garage/psychedelia, Pere-Ubu-esque rustbelt trippery & the experimental post-punk spasms of The Work (SAKI)
Metabolism: A Salute To The Energy Of The Sun
Another offering from fringe pop combo BIRD NAMES. The band is a duo, of sorts, comprised of PHELAN LA VELLE & DAVID LINEAL, though a cast of characters have helped them along. They explore a pop sound that touches as much on the naïve as it does the borders of avant-experimentation. The album is 12 songs of Beach Boys "Smiley Smile", psychedelic rhythms, & dense, lo-fi pop songcraft.(SAKI)
Live at the Velvet Lounge
Father Yod's sons live on The Legacy (or viceversa)... psychedelic music at its best and one of the best, in term of sound quality, album ever released in the entire Qbico/Sagittarius catalog
Live at St Mary's Old Church & Burial Ground
Recorded live at St Mary’s Old Church & Burial Ground in Stoke Newington, London on the 16th October 2011, the band have laid down what is quite possibly the fullest realisation of their monolithically heavy live shows. Its a juddering juggernaught of crushing intensity, pounding drums thudding their way through beds of gargantuan psych guitar drones, while electrifying sitar collides against booming vocal incantations and lysergic doom heaviness. For those you you that are in…
Music for Sick Queers
The German Shepherds, formed by Sandy Stark and Stephen Scheatzle in Nov. 1981, released a three song ep in early "82 with "Booty Jones" -- to child molester and kidnapper Kenneth Parnell; "I Adore You" -- an offering of prayer and submission and "Message from JJ" -- a rousing sermon by Peoples Temple chief Rev. Jim Jones. Later that year a dub version of "I Adore You" and "The Earthquake Has Come" appeared on the "You'll Hate This Record, Record" compilation lp. In 1983 the Shepherds began work…
We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic
In May 2011, Foxygen's Sam France and Jonathan Rado nervously handed off a CD-R of their homemade mini-opus Take the Kids Off Broadway to producer and visionary Richard Swift after his performance in a Lower East Side club. The duo, who had just mixed and burned the disc that very night, had been devotees of Swift's outsider-pop oeuvre since high school, when they first began recording their own pubescent forays into oddball rock n' roll (At least a dozen records were finished before they …
Season Of Risk
Colour photocopied sleeve. Edition of 325** Arresting Americana Doom and etheric grunge from the edge of civilization. Since sacrificing their Mythical Beast, Corinne Sweeney and Jeremiah Cowlin abandoned Philly for the wilds of Coyote, New Mexico, living off the grid and conceiving the low sunken sound of Ether Island. "A Side opener “Season Of Risk” corrals a mud-flood of thick tectonic shred over a buried beat, Sweeney’s vox tearing through in hot red flashes like a prairie flash fire …
Brokeback And The Black Rock
In the fall of 2010, when Douglas McCombs convened a new version of the band, Brokeback hadn't played a live show for more than two years and had not recorded any new music for eight. The band, a long-running side project for Tortoise and Eleventh Dream Day's Douglas McCombs, had stiffened up, sometimes getting lost in a welter of meticulously constructed electronics. McCombs's idea was not to start over, exactly, but to start fresh, approaching similar harmonic content from a different directio…
Foetus
An internationally known artist, Franco Battiato has been everything in his long career, from beat singer to avantgarde performer, producer, contemporary music composer.His beginnings lay in the mid 60's, with many singles released with no particular success, the first two under his real name of Francesco. He had left the native Sicily (he was born in Jonia, near Catania in 1945) moving to Milan around 1965.Fetus, housed in a outrageous cover (reproducing a foetus) was definitely a prog al…
The Lost Tapes
Limited Vinyl Box Set, includes 5 x 180GM vinyl LP's, 28 page 12" booklet and a 24" poster - includes 30 previously unreleased tracks* "The Lost Tapes was curated by Irmin Schmidt and Daniel Miller, compiled by Irmin Schmidt and Jono Podmore, and edited by Jono Podmore. When the legendary Can studio in Weilerswist was sold to the German Rock N Pop Museum, they bought everything, including the army mattresses that covered the walls for sound protection, and relocated it to Gronau. Whils…
Deep Politics
Deep Politics was conceived during the lengthiest gestation period between Grails albums, and reflects a deeper, more educated level of concentration. In their ongoing exploration of occult/fringe culture and the rich history of film music, they have cultivated a unique environment that inspires both an eternal sense of longing and an indelible sense of dread. Produced by the band, as always, the most immediately noticeable advances are the lush string arrangements (courtesy of acclaimed compose…
Burning Off Impurities
Following soon after the critically praised Black Tar Prophecies collection on Important Records, Portland, Oregon's Grails return with their first proper studio album since 2004 release of Redlight. Burning Off Impurities - their debut for Temporary Residence Ltd. - makes good on the promise of those past releases in delivering an album that not only thrusts the group to new heights, but also significantly pushes the instrumental rock genre forward for the first time in nearly a decade. An incr…
Doomsdayer Holiday
Following up last year's Burning Off Impurities and their recent Take Refuge In Clean Living EP, Grails return with their darkest, heaviest record yet. Written and recorded over the last 18 months,Doomsdayer's Holiday delivers on the promises made by their previous albums, taking equal pride in smoky psychedelics and mountain-ascending riffs. With Faust, Earth and Sunn O))) collaborators acting as engineers - not to mention drummer Emil Amos having recently become the new other half of Om - Grai…
The Garden
Limited Copies! By some mysterious and fantastic stroke of luck Sixtoo and Marco's Bully imprint have landed themselves the exclusive rights for this obscure third album from electronic psych masters The Silver Apples. Not only that but they have also now produced the first ever vinyl version of this seminal LP and have even dug deep enough to include some killer bonus cuts - never before heard. The band's name was inspired by the same poetic source that Morton Subotnick nabbed for his se…
Emotional Planet
Chris Rose's Robust Worlds has impressed us since first glimpse. He was actually barefoot, if you can believe that, and his set had the feel of a way more lysergic Kevin Ayers. It was freezing fucking cold and I'm pretty sure he wore a Hawaiian shirt. His debut LP is called Emotional Planet, and it's deceptively simple. Voice, guitar, some noisy shit, whatever. His playing is sick: fluid, unforced, warm, soothed and soothing. It's a bath you don't want to exit. Seriously, if yr going to play gui…
Home Is The Sun
Invisible Things is the duo of guitarist Mark Shippy (U.S. Maple) and drummer Jim Sykes (Parts & Labor). Well beyond the stereotypical thoughts of a guitar, drum improv/jam session, the drumming is based the study of Sri Lankan percussion and applied to the modern drum kit. This foundation of the drums allows for explorations by the guitar that is tight and sparse one moment and then seamlessly shifted into majestic swirls of reverberation. The album, comprised of 17 tracks, is presented as on…
Anywhere
UK version. First album from the legendary Japanese rockers fronted by Yuya Uchida. Although an album consisting mainly of cover versions, Anywhere still exhibited many of the musical traits that were to come to the fore on the bands next release, the classic Satori, an album of original material delivered with panache by the increasingly confident Uchida. An album made memorable by its risque cover as well as its ground-breaking approach to Western rock music.
Tenkujin
Fifth and final release by Far East Family Band (if you include the 1973s Nihonjin released under the Far Out banner), Tenkujin was the first of the bands albums to be released in the US on the small and short-lived Calfornian-based All Ears label. Without Kitaro, who by this time had departed to persue a solo career, the band reverted to its earlier balled-based sound, this time supported on drums by former Samurai alumnist Yujin Harada. The expected Pink Floyd influences appear in abundance, a…