★Holy Mountain
Silver Bells
New holiday themed single from Moon Duo. Erik and Sanae add more lilt to the season than any combination of egg nog and booze ever will. On the B side the duo wrap a coat around the classic "Goat Head Soup" deep cut "Winter."
Lords of Falconry
A heady, sludge-rocking slab of prime Holy Mountain psychedelia from the fabulously monikered Lords Of Falconry, whose bird of prey-related band name may or may not be some kind of nod to Hawkwind - to whom these guys clearly owe a debt. With tracks like 'Doomsday Legislation' and the Acid Mothers Temple-esque 'Scottish Chords' you can expect thick, fudgey, mind-altering slabs of stoner riffage and fuzzy space-rock of the finest vintage, while some suitably wild soloing slices through the hammer…
Fin Eaves
We don’t write record reviews often these days thanks to the current paradigm of online music journalism. Considering our hyperactivie information age zeitgeist, why do you need some blowhard like myself describing a record to you when you can just pipe in the preview on Last.fm or whatever? With that said, it takes a certain type of album to convince me that I have some serious science to impart on others, and spirit warriors Cloudland Canyon’s latest, Fin Eaves, is just that type of work. Thi…
Voice of the Seven Thunders
Already drawing comparison to the heyday of '70s acid rock & the likes of Amon Duul II, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Japan's Flower Travelin' Band, early Pink Floyd, the Velvet Underground's drone jams, the electronic kosmische of Cluster & the unhinged organic grooves of International Harvester
Six Organs Of Admittance
Rare 1998 LP reissued on CD with two rarer bonus tracks, all on CD for the first time. In 1998 Ben Chasny self-released an LP of his 'acoustic based project[ions]' under the name Six Organs of Admittance. The resulting five-song LP is a masterpiece of diverse elements using acoustic and electric guitars, a detuned violin, organ, electronics and koto. The material covers a lot of ground: there's an acid folk duet, an epic, three-part space suite, and two short concrète-like pieces that entice hid…
Dark Noontide
Back in stock! Limited edition vinyl issue. The fourth album from Ben Chasny and one of his most complete, 'Dark Noontide' sees the guitarist exploring the Eastern themes approached in his earlier work and also delving further into the dark drone and unsettling ambience of his debut. Indeed, sidestepping some of the more upbeat solo-guitar moments of 'Dust & Chimes', Chasny manages to create an opium fuelled moonlit Middle Eastern haven in the comfort of your front room; you can almost smell the…
Discovery
Clear and Discovery were originally released as two companion CDRs by James Ferraro (of the whole Skaters / Lamborghini Crystal / 90120 / Splash / Nirvana axis) and comprise the August 1974 (Taj-Mahal Travellers) of his discography. Both albums contain absolutely beautiful whirling hall-of-knives-style synth drone that makes one want to reference Klaus Schulze or Bobby Beausoleil. Clear bursts with flam beats and a cluster of melodies muffled like a calliope wrapped in a soggy tarp, while Discov…
Clear
Clear and Discovery were originally released as two companion CDRs by James Ferraro (of the whole Skaters / Lamborghini Crystal / 90120 / Splash / Nirvana axis) and comprise the August 1974 (Taj-Mahal Travellers) of his discography. Both albums contain absolutely beautiful whirling hall-of-knives-style synth drone that makes one want to reference Klaus Schulze or Bobby Beausoleil. Clear bursts with flam beats and a cluster of melodies muffled like a calliope wrapped in a soggy tarp, while Discov…
Metempsychotic Melodies
Raw picked acoustic guitar drones dominate here as the instrumental fades into the waking dream soliloquy of observation. A long waltzy drone w/ enough spooky atmosphere for one to think that it could have been recorded at Sunshine studios as there is a heavy Vogel vibe to the whole thing.
For Octavio Paz
CD reissue of sold-out limited edition vinyl. Since the release of Six Organs of Admittance's self-titled debut in 1998, Ben Chasny has played pure guitar within individual songs, but For Octavio Paz is his first full record to explore the guitar inside and out, solo and over-dubbed, steel and nylon string (in fact, For Octavio Paz is the first Six Organs album to feature the reverberations of a nylon string guitar). What really sets Chasny apart from the other modern Fahey worshippers is that C…
Dust & Chimes
A limited edition reissue of Dust & Chimes by Six Organs of Admittance, Ben Chasny's second amazing, underground folk-psych project from behind California's Redwood curtain. Heavy, acoustic guitar and mumbled vocalizations merge with out-there jamming in a style that has been compared to guys with LPs on Takoma, though Dust & Chimes is actually closer than anyone else is ever going to come to pantsing the first two Tyrannosaurus Rex albums. The sun is tanging, people.
Weisse Messe
Touting the slogan 'Organic free metal from Malaysia' I have to say I was intrigued even before I popped this record on the deck - I mean how can you possibly dislike a record if it lives up to that slogan, and I'm happy to say that it really, truly does. While being more 'free' than 'metal', this Malaysian improvisational five-piece make quite a racket and armed with two saxophones, bass, guitar and drums they're not your traditional rock band. In fact the band have more in common with Kraut ro…
Khora
"Khora" is the fifth full-length by Aufgehoben. Since the release of their previous album, "Messidor", the group has somewhat relaxed their strict commitment to anonymity by allowing their names to be known and photos to be taken, and even playing a few well-received live shows. "Messidor" may have been mellower, but the progression displayed on "Khora" leads one to believe that full-on rock may be in the cards for this group, who have seemingly removed the elbow patches from their jackets and r…
Messidor
Messidor is the fourth album from the UK's Aufgehoben, who record unformed improvised sounds and then, over a period of time, mix and mutate them into a not immediately identifiable form of raw instrumental rock noise. It is the discordant and hostile sound of mechanical beasts locked in a cage against their will via incredible levels of distortion, clattering percussion and a wide spectrum of overtones produced by scraped and scratched guitar strings. In time a sense of structure is revealed an…