Rock /
Apropos Cluster
“Apropos Cluster” was released in Coralville, Iowa, in deepest provincial America. Youthful enthusiast Russ Curry (sic) set up the Curious Music label on his own initiative to release this very album. Emboldened by the spirit of the independent movement, he paid for manufacturing himself and took care of CD distribution, as well as doing his best to ensure that a few copies made their way to Europe. In common with so many independent label operations, Russ Curry lacked the financial clout to mar…
s/t
White Poppy, the “experimental therapeutic pop” project from British Columbian inner-peacenik Crystal Dorval, has been evolving fresh forms for a couple years now. Last winter, packing a satchel full of four-track tapes, she ventured out from her bedroom haven and boarded a boat across the Strait of Georgia to the town of Ladysmith, on Vancouver Island, to The Noise Floor Recording Studio, to mastermind and mix the ten deluxe, delirious dream-gaze gems comprising her self-titled full-length debu…
Foz
A couple of Autumns ago, on the back of a series of concerts and hosting a workshop togheter in Oporto, the duo of Toshimaru Nakamura and Manuel Mota recorded an informal session. From that natural affinity resulted Foz. It may be considered an historic document under the premise that it's Nakamura's first fully improvised, recording solely on electric, guitar in a decade. Throughout two long pieces the duo on call carves a well balanced harmony between more reflexive and purely physical moment…
Mantricoom
About 1 hour and a half of droning doom/ dark ambient on 2 cd in a de luxe handmade packaging by Luigi Mennella. As a long, phlegmatic journey towards annihilation, "Mantricoom" opens the door to a new perception of the union of ecstatic rapture and pain. With this rotten, obsessive, lysergic double album Croce (ex-keyboard player from metal combo Power Symphony) starts a new path among the meanders of the most viral sludge core, the meditative drone doom and a post-industrial sound corroded by …
Benji
Mark Kozelek is back with a new Sun Kil Moon album featuring Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley, Jen Wood (who has worked with the Postal Service), Will Oldham, and Owen Ashworth (formerly known as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, now of Advance Base).
Sub Contra
People of the North is Kid Millions (drums) and Bobby Matador (keyboard, synth, vocals) of Oneida, and Sub Contra is their Thrill Jockey debut. While their sound, like Oneida's, is constantly shifting and absorbing new concepts and ideas, Sub Contra is a work that fully embraces tumult and darkness in startling and dramatic ways. People of the North have been an active entity since 2003, but it wasn't until 2010 with the release of Deep Tissue on their own Brah imprint and Steep Formations, whic…
A Gourd of Gold
2013 release "From the time we started Latitudes, we’ve held a secret wish list of bands that we intended to lure into our studio. We’ve cut a major notch in our bedpost by finally scoring with Arbouretum, a band that meets universal approval at Latitudes HQ. Arbouretum offer up four cover versions of the brilliant Gordon Lightfoot, the oft-overlooked Canadian singer-songwriter who helped define the folk-rock sound of the Sixties and Seventies. The highlight of the session is unsurprisingly the …
Homeless cats
The Swedish psychedelic trance-rock pioneers new album - Homeless Cats. Eleven new boundless tracks with organic music for open minds. A 40-year anniversary is actually rather on the small. Back in 1967 the guitarist Bo Anders Persson had already started his Terry Riley-inspired underground band Parson Sound with the bass player Torbjorn Abelli and drummer Thomas Mera Gartz, amongst others. They evolved into International Harvester, then Harvester, and finally striking root as Trad Gras och Sten…
Los Doroncos
A monument to Japanese rock! Los Doroncos are a Tokyo supergroup formed by Kiyohiro Takada (Les Rallizes Denudes), Kawaguchi Masami (Dustbreeders, New Rock Syndicate), Mako Hsegawa (Maher Shalal Hash Baz). This is their debut Lp and it is just amazing. 4 long pieces that evolve into beautiful electric jams: past, present and future of the Tokyo underground sound are all in here! Released in an edition of 150 copies on the 8mm Records label. Housed in handmade cover."It’s a lot more laid back a…
Appalachian excitation
The meeting of composer Arnold Dreyblatt and psych-folk trio Megafaun shouldn’t be seen as unlikely just because it’s cross-generational, or even (arguably) cross-genre. Such categorizations have to be set aside before taking in their Appalachian Excitation. Born in New York in 1953, Dreyblatt came up under such lauded experimental groundbreakers as Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros and La Monte Young, obtaining a Master’s degree in composition from Wesleyan University. Now based in Berlin, where h…
Live At Doornroosje (Nijmegen 1982)
Recordings of a stand-out gig at Doornroosje in Nijmegen (NL). By 1982 De Brassers had been playing in almost every small public space or squad in the area and logically they had gathered a cult following. Sporadicly they also performed in The Netherlands. Doornroosje was / is the club where underground music groups performed before they became well-known, especially the 80s were an interesting period with Joy Division, Nick Cave and many local punk / new wave bands hitting the stage. Here we fi…
Rock Power
Reissue of an extremely rare and essential Sunroof! CD-R released during a European tour in 2003 on Matthew Bower's own imprint, Rural Electrification Program (REP). On this LP, Bower is joined on guitar by Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra and Flower-Corsano Duo) and the result was once qualified as Sunroof's rock record and its tribute to Neil Young and AC/DC (hence the title). RockPower is a very singular record because it documents a very short time period in the M. Bower/Sunroof! evolut…
Live at the Cairo High Cinema Institute
I saw him at a street party in Giza where a few hundred people had amassed to dance and scream into the night. Flanked by Khaled Mando and Islam Tata, his two drummers pounding furiously asthe signature tone of his synth intensified for almost two hours, Islam Chipsy demonstrated his completely revolutionary take on modern Egyptian Shaabi. The sound was raw and distorted, thevolume was deafening, and the energy was high. Thirty minutes into the set, the trio pulled out blindfolds and put them on…
Galaxies
Laurence Vanay is the pseudonym for Jacqueline Thibault, wife of producer and musician Laurent Thibault (Magma). Her debut album "Galaxies" (1974) is pure genius: almost all instrumental, with gorgeous keyboards of many types, acoustic/electric guitar, even a little Zeuhl bass. There are wordless vocals on many of the tracks, although she occasionally sings in a soft, seductive manner. Incredible, spacey “avant-garde progressive chanson,” a Holy Grail for most collectors of 70's underground Fren…
Blank Generation
2013 repress. Exact repro vinyl version of the debut Richard Hell album, originally issued by Sire in 1977; 180 gram vinyl . "Hell formed the Voidoids, whose unwavering individualism kept the group out of the big time while producing a demanding and impressive corpus of work. 'I was saying let me out of here before I was even born.' That lyric sums up Hell's attitude, which he expanded and perfected on Blank Generation with a new version of the title track and such powerful statements as 'Love C…
La Bas (1987-1992)
JFK is the project of British rock and electronic musician Anthony Di Franco (Ramleh, Skullflower, Ethnic Acid). Originally active between 1987 and 1992, JFK was conceived as an experimental rock band that could create "a total music, absorbing all possibilities." This exclusive CD compiles rare and previously-unreleased tracks, including the Temple of Set/Sexodus 7" (previously-released by Fourth Dimension in 1992). The JFK sound is a brain-melting clash of electronic rhythms, blazing guitar ri…
Don't tell the driver
Finally, after 15 years, Big Mick Turner has turned in the big rock record we always knew he had in him. Yeah, Don't Tell the Driver is a different kind of record from all the Mick Turner records -- not just his own, but the ones he's done with Dirty Three, Bonny Billy, Cat Power, Fungus Brains, and Venom P. Stinger put together. So, what's so different about Don't Tell the Driver anyway? Well, Mick grew a mustache for this one. That must mean it's his Sgt. Pepper; a consolidation and developmen…
Surrender to the Fantasy
Stop right there, hands in the air! If you want to know what Magik Markers think is good for you, you'll Surrender to the Fantasy. For this long-desired alpus, they've been working in threes and stuff. Triangles. The hermetic trifecta of knowledge, Christ and the two thieves, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and the original tagline of the Markers' symbol: '3 down, no to go.' Meaning, these three get it and literally no one else needs to, 'cept the record-buying public, tra la la, ha ha ha ha. STTF (nev…
Veterans of disorder
Back in play just to celebrate 14 years, 2 months and 12 days since its original release is Royal Trux's penultimate album, Veterans of Disorder. Coming off the fan-favorite Accelerator LP, it was clearly time to build on expectations, right? Uh... listen, maybe this isn't the band for you. Neil and Jennifer were fans of rock n roll to the finish, sure -- but in that, Royal Trux was a dyed-in-the-wool contrarian enterprise, rebels to the core, and everything they endeavored to was viewed from th…
Mirror repair
Gastr Del Sol emerged from the remains of Bastro in 1992 with the brooding, mostly drumless album, ‘The Serpentine Similar’. This represented an unlikely evolution from the fury of Bastro, but evolution was only getting started - and ‘unlikely’ was one of the ongoing principles in Gastr Del Sol’s approach. Before the sessions for the second album, Bundy Brown left the group and David Grubbs asked Jim O’Rourke to come play. 1994’s ‘Crookt, Crackt Or Fly’ tangled the clean lines of the original ba…