Rock /
The Weird Weeds
"The album's arc from patience to brightness is as natural as an orbiting planet, but Weird Weeds do that one better at the end, stuffing a miniature solar system into one seven-minute track. True to form, this closing piece builds intensity not thro…
Far West
On "Far West," the Master Musicians of Bukkake mark a turn from their Totem Trilogy. If the Totems were an expression of yang energy, then the "Far West" cycle is the yin that took seed within the trilogy. What happens when you travel so far east loo…
Cuckoo live life like Cuckoo
Now in their tenth year the band have been gathering plaudits and accumulating new fans with every release, and after playing to thousands at Supersonic Festival last year, things are accelerating at an even faster pace. As with each album release, H…
Polar satellites
Polar Satellites is a mesmerising collection of percussion improvisations performed in duo by Nathan and Scott deep in the winter of 2009 and 2010 with absolutely no overdubs. Building on the starkness of last years Effigy by Pelt, the duo have recor…
Cat mask at huggie temple
“The outcome of a collective trudge across the European/American desert for 40 days and 40 nights.†Cat Mask at Huggie Temple is the superb debut 12†by Desert Heat, a dust bowl rock trio of Steve Gunn, John Truscinski and Cian Nugent.…
Armed Courage
With nary a praising documentary, coffee table photo book or tribute band to their name, The Dead C are nonetheless one of the most respected, longest surviving groups in the history of rock. Still sporting the original band members (Michael Morley o…
Message From Era Ora
One of the most original and innovative Krautrock bands, Embryo fused traditional ethnic music with their own jazzy space rock style. Over their 40-year existence, during which Christian Burchard has been the only consistent member, the group has tra…
New gods: Aardvark through Zymurgy
Here’s an album of truly out-there (and Julian Cope-approved) psychedelia from the proto-punk era."Analogue synthesizers swirled and farted, totally fogging up the vocals and undermining the perpetually descending/ascending Inna-Gadda-Da-Sunshine-Of-…
A history of every one
'A History of Every One' by Bill Orcutt is an album of songs: minstrel songs, holiday songs, hymns, marches, cowboy songs, Disney songs, work songs, delta blues. The original tunes themselves are nothing special, well known, but not particularly well…
1986-1991
"The Venom P. Stinger retrospective is on. One of the roughest groups of the '80s is back in print on vinyl and for the first time ever on CD, and still nice and hard and rough and wild on either format. File under: punk rock/noise rock/free-of-co…
Ark Procession / Jericho
Al Cisneros is no stranger to the deep meditations of a minimalist, sub-sonic song. We've all been totally faced by the ritual low-end thunder his band, OM, bestow as gospel both live and on record on the regular, a sound source which can hardly b…
Era
"Era is the fourth annual report from Chicago powerhouse quartet Disappears. It was formed during the gloom of the Chicago winter at Electrical Audio by now regular foil John Congleton. Insular and dark, the album sees the band further refining t…
Moths
Michael Morley, Nina Canal, Sara Stephenson : electric guitars. Recorded by Roland Groenenboom at De Player, Rotterdam, August 2009 mixed at My Pit, Port Chalmers, 2011. Artworks: Eric Claridge Owl Moth & Mothface 2012 oil on canvas 30,5 x 30,5 cm ea…
All My Relations
"Black Pus is Brian Chippendale, who rose to prominence as the drummer of noise rock titans Lightning Bolt and Mindflayer. All My Relations is constant forward motion and audible physicality. Chippendale's furious drumming style is ever present and …
Ensemble Pearl
Double LP edition. Cosmic, heavy amplified rock drops and ripples, auras radiate and expand into cloud forms, through which lightning bolts. Tides rise, the moons wax upon a place somewhere between Link Wray, Hex-era Earth and early Tangerine Drea…
Free Reign
Their 7th album! Record & produced by the band in their hometown of Liverpool & mixed w/ assistance from Daniel Lopatin (ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER, FORD & LOPATIN). The title is apt for this particularly bold & assured new transmission from planet Cli…
The News Is You: The Sacred & Secular Music of Nick Freund
"Recorded at the San Francisco Theological Seminary's own Montgomery Chapel, acid-folk-rock psychedelic gem Search Party Montgomery Chapel was the brainchild of (then Reverend) Nicholas Freund. Having left Wisconsin in the late 1960s to join a burge…
Terribly Well
"The noise rock parade that defies definition, set out on a mission of pure volume worship that is the post-decade pilgrimage of NY-based Sightings. After eight instinctive albums, the Sightings guys show no mercy with endless annihilation of thei…