★Not Not Fun Records
Radian lines
Wet Hair heads Shawn Reed and Ryan Garbes have been jamming sideways strains of long-lensed electricity music for years now, but their trajectories as visual artists arc back even farther. So after a small infinity of J-cards and zines and LP sleeves designs, it’s a real pleasure to finally be able to present a preferential suite of some of their finest (and, till now, unseen) compositions in a glossy, full-color, pro-printed 22-panel art volume, bookended by a brand new black vinyl 33 RPM singl…
From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light
Given that this band are called Barn Owl, and have that righteous mythical beast scrawled on their album sleeve, I think it's pretty clear what direction this LP is going to take. Tranced-out psych studies are the order of the day, and wielding an arsenal of guitars, harmonium, harmonica, rhodes and synthesizer, this quartet (well, there are four of them this time around - apparently they have a floating, variable roster of chums to call upon) tap into some creepy pagan atmospheres, and ceremoni…
The Outside Room
RESTOCK: Natalie Weyes Blood (originally Weyes Bluhd) has existed in the grime-ghost fringe-music catacombs since at least 2006, though originally it was in more of a crouched/hieroglyphic FX pedals style, culminating in a European tour with Axolotl. After two seasons of hibernation and a relocation to Baltimore, she materialized her 'Blood In Bluhd Out' transformation and began writing/playing the darkly haunted narcotic drifter ballads that make up The Outside Room, her first official f…
Vibrant New Age
Sadly (for us left coasters), in November Ms Leyna Noel aka Psychic Reality decamped from SF to NYC, but before packing up her every worldly possession and road-tripping trans-America she eked out a sliver of precious time to hole up in the studio with Phil Manley (Trans Am, Jonas Reinhardt, etc) and record her long-awaited debut full-length on thick 2 inch tape. Vibrant New Age is the result. The name says it all. But Noel’s New Age is not the 80’s redux fad of healing crystals, pastel fades, d…
936
Sometimes it feels so simple: two of our favorite people in one of our favorite bands release one of our favorite records of all time. 2009’s Imaginary Falcons was its own genius slushpile of tape-hissy drift-dub haze anthems, no question, but 936 takes every facet of the Peaking Lights mighty diamond and shines it to fluorescent perfection. The songwriting is insane; “All The Sun That Shines,” “Amazing & Wonderful,” “Tiger Eyes (Laid Back),” etc, all seep into yr mindstream and float there like…
Bored Fortress
"Iowa City silver apple-pickers Wet Hair pitter-patter into yet another picture-perfect futurist synth-pop raga, 'Blessed.' Yes you are. On the flip, kindred midwestern matrimony team Peaking Lights hotbox a basement of black ark basslines and waterlogged reggae 45s. Sleeve art by Robert Beatty."
Ghost with chains
Long-running Twin Cities horsepower trio Daughters Of The Sun have been subtly chugging out their faded-tattoo spirit-in-the-sky psych exhaust for at least half a decade now but we didn’t catch the drift till March ’09, when we got to witness a packed post-midnight smoke-soaked Minneapolis loft set and waved our lighter with the masses. Ghost With Chains is their third official full-length (not including some EPs and a killer split) and it’s as beautifully moon-burnt and highway-swept as anythin…
…On Sea-Faring Isolation
"A casual interweb cruiser could be forgiven for confusing Dolphins Into The Future the “band” (aka the one-man tape-loop blue-age ambient project executed by Belgian Cetacean Nation ambassador Lieven Martens) with Dolphins Into The Future the book (written by dimensional traveler Joan Ocean concerning her 20-year-long real life spirit quest to commune with a school of 200 wild Hawaiian Spinner dolphins). And, to be fair, they’re a LOT alike. Both deal heavily in trippy, drifting logics, vibrati…
So Unreal
Episode two in season one of the LA Vampires Collab Chronicles finds her joining forces with elusive alien discotech-head Matrix Metals of the nomadic Outer Limits Recordings cabal. Blurry ornate cassette-loop architectures groove and grind under jazzy Casio canopies while Ms. LA Vamps screws it all down and layers in additional square wave keyboard lines, echo chamber FX, drum machine detailing, low-end throbs, and sings lead on a gold spraypainted microphone. The entire LP's got that '…
Make It Real
Wait, this is the new Pocahaunted album cover? Gone may be the days of cassette cases featuring creepy collages and hand-dyed bags with feathers attached, but this is something else entirely. I mean, there’s a parrot with blue Ray-Bans, a giant dollar sign, a “He’s on fire!” NBA Jam-style basketball…What is going on? After the shock of the cover art, I waded into the unfamiliar soup that waited within. From the opening thrums of “Touch You”, the lo-fi recording aesthetic seemed to be held …
Concussion Summer
'Concussion Summer' on Not Not Fun is by a merry band of travelers called Social Junk. I've never had concussion but I was hoping to this summer, sadly there's been no decent weather for me to go out tree climbing or trying to get myself set upon by gangs of local toughs. Next year, eh? It's kind of hard to know what to say about this LP really, other than I like it. Some bits are noisy and lo-fi tribal a bit like that amazing Heavy Winged LP from a couple of weeks back and there are even…
Split
Finely dressed in a full-colour Maya Miller sleeve, this split release from Ex Cocaine and Yellow Swans captures two wildly differing bands on great form. Ex-Cocaine is the collaboration between guitarist and vocalist Brian Ramirez and percussionist Mike Casler, who fashion psych-heavy instrumental jams leading way out into oblivion, even having a go at a Meat Puppets cover on 'Sexy Music'. Yellow Swans meanwhile don't come nearly so close to that sort of song formatting, instead offering…
Heavy Deeds
Sun Araw - and the Not Not Fun label in general for that matter - are becoming ever more essential with each release. Heavy Deeds is the latest dubbed-out, tropical psych missive from this far-out collective, featuring an increasingly mature approach to experimental queasiness, which on this occasion is reminiscent of fellow solar travellers Sunburned Hand Of The Man knocking heads together with Sun Ra. There's some incredible wah-wah funk to be found here, jostling amongst a barrage of synapse-…
Pacific Drift
Way too much is made these days of looking back, memory, social network fantasias. What a bummer, cause reality s a bad experience and 2012 is on deck; we deserve whatever we get. Evolve or erode, dudes. LA visigoths Robedoor slip into another sinkhole of voidist shadow-rock with Pacific Drift, three new tracks recorded across the last greylight winter. The A side stirs into a jazzy apocalypto depression with flute-keys and an overdriven OM groove that spirals in a web of distortion before drift…
Foxy Baby
Surely this can only be the work of the ultra mysterious Sam Meringue (Matrix Metals, Flashback Repository, Explorers) etc. I believe at one point this guy was actually suspected to be James Ferraro which isn't difficult to believe as their work has very similar qualities. Anyway this is apparently an "esoteric glam-damaged concept record about Berlin nightclubs and foxy ladies" and listening to the tracks it makes sense. At times sounding like Ariel Pink being sucked into some phazer vort…
LA Vampires & Zola Jesus
Easily one of the releases of the year so far, finally available on limited edition vinyl* Ghostly goings on from gothic psych queen Zola Jesus and kindred spirit LA Vampires (the current guise of Amanda Brown from Pocahaunted), who collaborate across this killer new mini album. 'Bone Is Bloodstone' rumbles into motion with those familiarly smudged out, indecipherable vocals and evaporating drum machines but there's a heavy bass groove and some ghoulish melodic developments set to balance …
New Age Outlaws
New York City, 2069. A new form of crime has evolved. Only one hard-as-nails ex-cop has what it takes to get to the bottom of their plot and stop the new age outlaws from finding the alien artifact and destroying earth as we know it." Back in March this year, NNF released the original version of this album on cassette, but it's maker, Dylan Ettinger, has returned to the master tapes in order to "further articulate the new age sci-fi ambient drift jazz vision of those pieces into something…
Psychical
An all-out stunner from Brian Pyles aka California's Starving Weirdos, joining in on NNF's current soundtrack-y agenda with an incredible solo album. 'Psychical' is about as heavy as they come, for synthesized dreams of dark African dread and blood curdling ambience, at least. The whole album plays through like a movie itself, tracks blending into one another like scenes to effectively toy with your senses of fear and what-the-f**k comes next... doom laden drones blacken the horizon to all…
Threshold
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, bands to solo projects, it’s all the same arc. And here it is, the final RIP action by star-crossed Not Not Fun institution Pocahaunted and the only recorded document of the final triforce-vocal line-up featuring Leyna Noel on keys/crooning/dance magic. The results blaze/amaze. “Threshold” was written on the road and melts through a river mistress intro before revving into a tense kraut-funk burner with catchy femme-soul vocables cascading down from every side. The …
Prophecy Of The Black Widow
Restocked, last copies around...Seeping out of the American underground on the always engrossing NNF label, Matt Hill presents his sophomore Umberto album. It follows on from the Giallo soundtrack style he brilliantly aped on 'From The Grave...' deeper into the bowels of the early '80s sound, leering creepily at John Carpenter and the more bewitching ends of Italo disco and new wavey bits. Many have tried this sound - step forward Zombi, Gatekeeper, Francesco Clemente, Anton Maiovvi - but …