★Blackest Ever Black
Weld
Faith Coloccia and Alex Barnett return to Blackest Ever Black with their second duo album, Weld; working with synthesizers, effected vocals, raw electrical noise, field recordings, EVP techniques, tape manipulation, and drum machines to create a music at once lucid and mystic. Its songs embody various experiential philosophies and objectives: searching for the sacred in the forgotten and supposedly useless; exploring the meaning of "natural"; listening for the pulse of the ancient; using technol…
Memory Care Unit
A new long-form offering of poignant, isolationist machine music from Secret Boyfriend. Eschewing the cryptic and compact song-sketches that characterised his 2013 Blackest Ever Black LP, This Is Always Where You’ve Lived, Ryan Martin instead guides us through vast interior topographies and nerve-damaged ambiences that comfort and deceive like memory itself. Beginning with "The Singing Bile" – minimal synth submerged and subjected to an almost oceanic pressure – the tracks are mostly crude, exte…
Manbait
Manbait is a survey of Regis's 2010-'15 productions and remixes for Blackest Ever Black. In addition to three originals (in several different versions) and his celebrated remixes of Raime, Vatican Shadow, Ike Yard, and Dalhous, it features three previously unreleased tracks: a Regis take on a lost song by his own teenage synth-punk group Family Sex, an alternate mix of Tropic of Cancer's "Plant Lilies at My Head," and an edit of his own "Blinding Horses." Regis -- real name Karl O'Connor -- requ…
Fooling Around
First vinyl release of the definitive version of "Fooling Around," which appeared in truncated form on Rat Columns' 2014 album Leaf (R.I.P. Society). Its void-chasing motoric and moody jangle evoke Splendour of Fear-era Felt or David Kilgour at his dreamiest, strapped to the engine of NEU!'s "Für Immer." "Living in the New World" summons Orange Juiceor The Modern Lovers, but with a darker, more delirious edge; "Should I Leave You Alone?" closes with square-jawed dub-bass and chewy tape FX yieldi…
Tearing Down Heaven
Very necessary standalone release of Six Six Seconds' Tearing Down Heaven, standout track from the 2012 Downwards compilation So Click Heels. Written and performed in Berlin by the elusive Eden and deftly recorded and mixed by Karl O'Connor. Darkly rapturous dream-pop; the abyssal swoon of shoegaze meets a harsher, more pernicious order of psychedelic rock minimalism. This 10" features a slightly extended version of "Tearing Down Heaven" and a stunning "Reprise" that unravels the original's comp…
Mince Glace
**Edition of 300 includes download code** Blackest Ever Black part the curtains to reveal Tarcar's compelling debut of "shut-in dub dysfunction" at the closing strokes of 2014. Sealing the label's most prolific year to date on a particularly evocative note, Mince Glace dwells in the nether regions of the echoplex, dreaming of creaky psych dub from AC Marias to Leven Signs and peddling sozzled, spectral organs for reclined minds. Vascilating between bombed-out and spiked-up vibes, it's a superb s…
This is always where you've lived
Blackest Ever Black's last release of 2013 comes from Secret Boyfriend, the solo project of North Carolina's Ryan Martin, who is also one-half of Boyzone and founder of the Hot Releases label -- a catholic endeavor that has seen him release records from the cream of the contemporary N.C. underground as well as reissuing classic sides by the likes of Maurizio Bianchi, Ghedalia Tazartes, and Ashrae Fax. To date, Secret Boyfriend's presence has been felt largely in the shape of live performance…
Dead unique
Blackest Ever Black presents to you Dead Unique, an album by Officer! recorded in 1995 but - outrageously, inexplicably - never before released into the public domain. This then is not a reissue or a revival; it’s a new record that just happens to have been maturing in the cask for, oh, a little shy of 20 years. It also happens to be a lost classic of English art-rock, and the crowning achievement in the career of its mercurial creator, Mick Hobbs. Londoner Hobbs’ roots are in the fecund RIO sce…
Retrieval
Blackest Ever Black welcome Barnett + Coloccia to their coven with the desolate scapes of 'Retrieval'. Whilst both artists have a background alloying metal and experimental modes - Faith Coloccia with Mammifer, Pyramids and Everlovely Lighteningheart, and Alex Barnett in Oakeater or more recently, solo for the likes of Catholic Tapes and Nihilist - their introspective 'Retrieval' collaboration is perhaps best defined in terms of their palette: tape-manipulated recordings of acoustic instr…
Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1980
Blackest Ever Black presents the first vinyl edition of Dickon Hinchliffe's original score for 1980 -- the second part of Channel 4 and Revolution Films' Red Riding trilogy, adapted by Tony Grisoni from David Peace's quartet of novels and first screened in 2009. Each film in the Red Riding trilogy, a landmark achievement in British television history, was helmed by a different director and had its own distinctive look, sound and feel. While Julian Jarrold's 1974 and Anand Tucker's 1983 were bo…
An Ambassador for Laing
LP version. Debut album from the Edinburgh-based duo of Marc Dall and Alex Ander, who work with intricately-stacked percussion, dub-wise bass and a rich harmonic tapestry of processed voices, keys, harp, vibraphone, guitar, woodwind, strings and synthesizer -- every sound re-sampled to the nth degree then subjected to subtle automation and rigorously fine-tuned over a period of many months. From the mesmerizing, pastoral drift of "Anger Sees Red" and "Dwelling by the Meadow" to agitated arabesqu…