★Not Not Fun Records
Cloudland Canyon / Mythical Beast
This pairing has been in the wings for a few years now by our count, but tripped things come to those who wait, so better late-as-shit than never. Cloudland Canyon have been spanning geographies (Brooklyn, Germany, Memphis) and genres (krautrock, drone, psych-pop) since at least 2002, but only recently has their technological studio-sorcery began to gather steam. Their offering here (“Harvest Hunt”) is a mechanical motorik ascent into symphonic hypnosis. Comparisons to classic Teutonic psych out…
Aquarealm
*In process of stocking* The tenth official full-length by St. Petersburg synth savant Vladimir Karpov aka X.Y.R. is a liquid suite of surreal tranquility, divined and designed to soundtrack the shimmering mysteries of underwater life: Aquarealm. Inspired by vintage Soviet cartoons, nature documentaries, and his own colorful aquarium fish, the album’s seven songs share a mood of contemplative depths and dizzying beauty, adrift in deepwater currents and bioluminescent tides. Hazy tones swell and …
Ring Mining
Ring Mining unites a psychedelic dream team comprising Brooklynites Heavy Winged and Portland's Inca Ore. On the first side its down to the epic fudge-filled grooves of Heavy Winged to dominate the horizon, blistering through their hallmark freeform avant-metal with an extra fathom or two of depth supplied by the wandering ambience of Inca Ore's toils. Flipping over, Ms. Ore takes to the mic - and it's as if Heavy Winged suddenly turn into a fully fledged rock combo with an actual lead singer. I…
Video Salon
The transcontinental collaboration of Arcata shoegaze abstractionist Brian Pyle and spectral Russian songstress Galya Chikiss began in Berlin, where the former was on tour and crashing with the latter, then finished in Northern California. Despite such distance, the duo’s debut feels symbiotic and seductive, shimmering nocturnal mirages of devotional drone and processional dub. Named after the site of certain of Chikiss’ formative teenage experiences (“trashy rooms with old anonymous TV sets and…
Reconsider Lounge
Trans-american Joe Knight recently caravanned his custom duffel bags of woozy jukebox esoterica from the Bay to the plains of central Texas but, before and during so, crafted and released the double-volume Scrap collection for multifaceted Midwestern organization, Bezoar Formations. "Reconsider Lounge" distills a portion of this material into different arrangements, intercut with an assortment of unreleased curiosities and classics, comprising an essentially new album in the instrumental …
12th House
Group Rhoda follows up her delectable debut on Night School with a much sharper and equally seductive album for Not Not Fun - easily one of their best releases in 2013. Her songs are now rendered with a higher fidelity and clarity adopting the purposeful innovations of post punk and the hypnotism of modern electronic music to give her deft arrangements a sturdy poise and transcendent appeal. It's still DIY at heart and we doubt you're gonna hear them on Radio 1 any time soon, but the sense of th…
Allegoria
A darker neon-lit return from NNF's far-eastern dream-pop idol "On her first proper full-length album, Tokyo netscape nightingale Sapphire Slows impressively expands on the spider web tone-bank nocturnes of 2011’s True Breath EP, with headier, haunted highs and eerier, elegant depths. Patiently pieced together across all of 2012 (plus change), and inspired by everything from St. Etienne’s plasticine Euro-house, obscured J-pop memories, Blue Bell Knoll and the saddest Section 25 remixes, Allegori…
Histrionic
The inimitable Estonian ex-pat takes inspiration from current hood, Brooklyn, in the darker, beguiling pop contours of her 3rd album proper. The challenging yet gratifying arrangements of 'Histrionic' are testament to both her consistency as a boundary-pushing artist, and an enduring belief in the role of pop music as a model for incisive cultural commentary and observation. Her sound here is more layered, spacious than previously heard, yet denser than ever, crammed with uncanny lyrical observ…
Temple Room
Matt Hill aka Umberto returns to the spectre of 'Temple Room' from his 'Prophecy Of The Black Widow' (2010) album for extended and alternative dancefloor versions. On the extended version he's doubled the track length, giving himself more time to tease out the kinky disco vibes with camp, Jamie Principle-esque synth runs and, whilst the Silvio mix locks into a stompng, Hi-NRG wiggle.
World Arena
The West Coast’s weirdest hidden-treasure trio, Bronze, have plied their molten composite of serpentine metro-gnomic drumming, oscillator raga, hash-oil free verse, and pendulum bass patterns for seven shaded years, but sonic documentation remains sparse. The new decade, thankfully, has seen them reversing this deficit, first with 2011’s Copper LP, and now with World Arena, which unfolds another octagon’s worth of their signature spellbound, smoke-ringed, psych-fusion explorations. Tracked at th…
Lowlife
Eclectic selection running from midnight jazz moods to swinging house and dusted downbeats. As much as Los Angeles gleams in the global mind as a gateway to dream fulfillment and televised wealth / fame amalgams, it’s equally a desert of disappointments. Hence the dead-end yoga cults, under-the-bridge tar dealers, valley burnouts, Inland Empire night-stalkers and seas of destitute Eastside lowlifes. This vibe is central to Afterhours’s languid, nocturnal musical vision, which has evolved from sl…
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…
City of Sweat
German steamroom wrecking crew LX Sweat returns from a winter of festival dates and self-symbiosis to lay out an impressively realized full-length debut of voidist club fantasia, equal parts Screw bootlegs, slow-jack synth freestyle, and degraded phaser wash. City of Sweat spirals through a judgement night of weird, codeined lust, luxury hallucinations, overdosed syrup rituals, and long, blurry nights stumbling home through alleys in the rain. Like last year’s Sweat Sweat Sweat cassette, this ne…
Gagged In Boonesville
French globe-tourist High Wolf has hand-rolled his way up Mount Fuji, trainspotted every corner of Europe, hitch-hiked across America and Australia, chugged Ganges water, and crouched on all manner of smoke-stained prayer rug since first looping a bongo back in ’09. His apprenticeship in the House of Wah nearly complete, he’s hinted at a potentially seismic shift in the High Wolf third eye doctrine lurking in the near future; perhaps his Away Team exfoliation moment is nigh. Fortunately, …
Kairos: Chronos
French globe-tourist High Wolf has hand-rolled his way up Mount Fuji, trainspotted every corner of Europe, hitch-hiked across America and Australia, chugged Ganges water, and crouched on all manner of smoke-stained prayer rug since first looping a bongo back in ’09. His apprenticeship in the House of Wah nearly complete, he’s hinted at a potentially seismic shift in the High Wolf third eye doctrine lurking in the near future; perhaps his Away Team exfoliation moment is nigh. Fortunately, …
Fever Logic
Ensemble Economique has emerged as an unusually globe-trotting creative valve for Arcata, CA, beachcomber Brian Pyle. The last year alone has seen him backpacking through Scandinavia, Europe and Russia—twice. Maybe his spirit’s too absorbent, ’cause he’s brought back some deeply heavier moods and ancient world weariness since his last outing on Not Not Fun, 2010’s demonic tribal monsoon Psychical. Recent splits with similarly instinctual psychedelic unclassifiables like Lee Noble and Her…
The New Dark Age of Love
The past two years have found Austin’s Lone State dark lord Xander Harris (aka Justin Sweatt) on a heavy transfigurative trip, overhauling his live rig, detouring through an expansive soundtrack project celebrating the 20th anniversary of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, touring outside Texas (from New Orleans to the Netherlands), plus a host of other inner life turmoils and metamorphoses. All of which seems to have seeped into the synthesizer soil of his stunning second full-length, The New Dark A…
Mask of the Maker
Fuses deep kosmische moods w/ jet-propulsion lab experiments, classic galactic Italo, soaring starblood synth workouts, funky astral ragas, psychedelic dust coulds & rare mantric guest vocals
Confrontations
Vinyl Edition of 750. Another crucial keystone in the occult arc de triomphe of Kansas City composer’s deepening discography! X-filed highway cover artwork designed by Dionysian visualist Tim Goodwillie.Kansas City’s Goblin king of neo-Giallo, brood-blooded dark fantasy soundtracking returns with his third official full-length, two years after the badass psychodrama of Prophecy of the Black Widow. The time betwixt was well spent, on tours (Europe twice, including the Mogwai-curated All To…
Videotape
Not surprisingly, Noah Anthony's inaugural 12-inch under his Profligate moniker is geared more towards dance floor demands than his stridently exploratory debut album, Come Follow Me (released just a month prior). The release sees the producer jettisoning the noise and drone aspects of his sound, concentrating instead on combining classic EBM and modern dark techno.Of the plate's two tracks it's "Videotape" that most exudes EBM's brooding muscularity. Moreover, its base components (military marc…